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Vol. 7, No. CGI. April 1, 1881 Annual Subscription, t30.^f 

LIFE OF 

'ERCY BYSSHE 

SHELLEY. 

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 



m 



red at the Tost Office, N. Y., as second-class matter. 
Copyright, 1884, by Johu W. Lovbsll Co. 



NEWVORK 



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1 



LOVELL'S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 



1. Hyperion, Longfellow 

2. Outre-Mcr, do 

3. The Happy Boy, Bjorn- 

son 

4. Arne, by Bjornson . . . 

5. Frankenstein, Shelley. 

6. Last of the Mohicans. 

7. Clytie, Joseph Hatton. 

8. The Moonstone, Part I 

9. The Moonstone, Part II 

10. Oliver Twist, Dickens. 

11. Coming Race, Lytton. 

12. Leila, by Lord Lytton. 

13. The Three Spaniards.. 

14. The Tricks of the. 

Greeks Unveiled 

15. -L'Abbe Constantin... 

16. Freckles, by Redcliff. 

17. The Dark Colleen, Jay 
13. Th:y were Married!.. 

19. Seekers after God 

20. The Spanish Nun. ... 

21. Green Mountain Boys 
2-2. Fleurette. Scribe 

23. 8ococd Thoughts 

24. The New Magdalen. .. 

25. Divorce. Margaret Lee 

ife of Washington.. . 

27. Socir.1 Etiquette 

28. Single Heart and Dou- 
ble Face, Chas. Reade 

20. Irene, by Carl Detlef.. 
ce Versa, F. Anstey 

31. rrnest Maltravers 

32. Tne Haunted House. 
&3. John Halifax, Mulock 

34. 800 Leagues on the 

Amazon, by Verne.. 

35. The Cryptogram 

36. Life of Marion 

al and Virginia 

38. Tale of Two Cities. ... 

39. i' he Hermits, Kingsley 

40. An Adventure in 

Thtile, and Marriage 
of M. F 

41. Marriage in High Life. , 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr. . , 

43. Two on a Tower 

44. Ka«scius, Dr. Johnson . 

45. Alice; or. Mysteries.. , 

46. Duke of Kandos , 

47. Baron MuQchausen. .. . 
43. A Princess of Thule... , 

le Secret Despatch.. , 

60. Larl7 Days of Cnris- 



Do., Part H 

61. Vicar of Wakefield... . 

52. Progress and Poverty. . 

53. The Spy. by Cooper. . . 

nne, Mrs Wood . 

55. A £ 

56. Adam Be'd^Eliot.P't I . 
Do, Part II 

57. The Golden Shaft 

58. Portia, by The Duchess . 

59. Last Bays of Pompeii, . 
50. The Two Duchesses... , 



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108. 


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111. 


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112. 


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Tom Brown's School 

Days .20 

The \* ooing O't, P,t I .15 
TheWooingO't, P't II .15 
TheVendeta. Balzac. .20 
Hypatia, by Kingsley, .15 

Do., Pa.til 15 

Selma, by Mrs. Smith. .15 
Margaret and her 

Bridesmaids. 20 

Horse Shoe Robinson .15 

Do., Part II 15 

. Gulliver's Travels 20 

.Amos Barton, by Eliot .10 
.The Berber, by Mayo. .20 
. Silas Marner, by E.iot .10 
. Queen of the County . . 20 
. Life of Cromwell, Hood. 15 
, Jane Eyre, by Bronte. .20 
, Child's Hist. England. .20 
, Molly Bawn, Duchess .20 
, Pillone, by Bergsoe. . . .15 
Phyllis, The Duchess. .20 
llomola, Eiiot, Par: I. .15 
Romola. Eiiot, Part II .15 
Science in Short Chap- 
ters 20 

Zanoni, by Lytton 20 

A Dau-hUr of Heth... .20 
The Right and Wrong 

Uses of the Bible 20 

Night and Morning. . . .15 

Do.,PartII 15 

Shandon Bells, Black. .20 
Monica, The Ducness. .10 

Hea: t and Science 20 

Tne Golden Calf 20 

The Dean's Daughter. .20 
Mrs. Geoffrey, Duchess .20 
Pickwick Papers, P tl .23 

Do., Part II 20 

Airy, Fairy Lilian 2.) 

Macleod of Dare 2) 

Tempest Tossed 20 

Do., Part II 20 

Letters from High Lat- 
itudes, Earl Dufferin .20 

Gideon Fleyce .20 

India and Ceylon 20 

The Gypsy Queen, . . 
The Admiral's Waid. .20 
Nimport, Bynner, P't 1 .15 

N import, Part II 15 

Harry Holbrooke 2) 

Tritons, Bynner, Pt I. 15 

Tritons, Part II 15 

Let Noth'g You Dismay . 10 
L*dy Audley's Scret. 20 
Woman's Place To-day .20 
Dunallan,by Kennedy .15 

Do., Part II .15 

Housekeeping and 

Homemaking 15 

No Nev Thing, Norris .20 
Spoopendyke Papers. .20 

False Hopes 15 

Labor and Capital 20 

Wanda, Ouida, Part I. .15 
Wanda, Part II 15 



117, 
118, 
119, 
120, 
121, 
l 122, 



113. More Words about 

the Bible 

114. Monsieur Lecoq, P't I . 
Monsieur Lecoq, P'tll.: 

115. Outline of Irish Hist. . 

116. The Lerouee Case 

Paul Clifford, Lytton. .' 
A New Lease of'Life.. .: 

Bourbon Lilies, 

Other People a Money .: 
The Lady of Lyons, . 
Ameliue du Bourg... . 

123, A Sea Queen, Russell. . 
• 124. The Laaks Lindores.. ' 
! 125. Haunted Hearts 

1-6. Loye, Lord Beresford. .! 

127. Under Two Flags 

Dc. (Ouida), Part II... .: 

128. Money, Lord Lytton.. .. 
In Peril of his Life... .J 

130. India; What Can it 

Teach Us? M. Muller J 

131. Jets and Flashes 

132. Moonshine and Mar- ] 
guerites 

Mr. Scarborough's 
Family 

Do., Part II 

Arden, Mary Robinson 

Tower of Percemont. . 
136. Yolande, Wm. Black. 
13T. Cruel London, Hatton 

The Gilded Clique..,. 

Pike County Folks.. . 

Cricket on the Hearth 

Henry Esmond. 

S trange Ad ventures of 
a Pnaeton 

143. Denis. Duval, Thack- 

eray . . . 

144. Old Curiosity Shop 
Do., Part II 

145. Ivanhoe, Scott, P't I. 
Do, Part II 

146. White Wing*, Back. 

M7. The Sketch Book 

148. Catherine, Thackeray 
14J. Janet's Repentance.. 

150. Barnaby Rudge, P't I J 
Barnaby Rudge, Pt II .1 

151. Felix Holt, by Eliot., .2 
12. Richelieu, by Lytton. .1 

153. Sunrise, Black, P't I. .1 
Do , Part Tl... 

154. Tour of the World in 

Eighty Days, Verne .2 

155. Mystery of Orciva! 

156. Lovel, the Widower.. ,H 

157. Romantic Adventu, 

of a Milkmaid liardy .!( 
15S. David Coppeineld. . 

Do, Part II 2 

150. Charlotte Temple li 

160. Rienzi, Lytton, Parti .1 
Do., Part II 

161. Promise of Marriage. .1< 
Faith and Unfai:h... .2 

163. ThellaipyMan 1 

164. Barry Lyndon. 



133. 



134 

:35. 



133. 
139. 
140. 
141. 
142. 



.1 



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HYGIENIC PUBLISHING CO., 917 Broadway, New York, 
or 482 Van Buren Street, Milwaukee, Wis. 



SHELLEY 



BY 

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 



NEW YORK 
JOHN W. LOVELL ( 
14 and 16 Vesey Str: 



<*&« 



i 

i 



CONTENTS. 



-+■ 



CHAPTER I. 

Page. 

BrRTH and Childhood ••••••• 9 

CHAPTER II. 
Eton and Oxford • •••••••• 16 

CHAPTER III. 
Life in London, and First Marriage • #32 

CHAPTER IV. 
Second Residence in London, and Separation from Harriet 51 

CHAPTER V. 
Life at Marlow, and Journey to Italy. «•...•• 65 

CHAPTER VL 
Residence at Pisa ................ 87 

CHAPTER VIL 
Last Days ..••••• in 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Epilogue . . . . . , 120 



-_ 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



i. The Poetical and Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited 
by Mrs. Shelley. Moxon, 1840, 1845. l vo ^ 

2. The Poetical Works, edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Reeves 
and Turner, 1876-7. 4 vols. 

3. The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by W. M. RossettL 
Moxon, 1870. 2 vols. 

4. Hogg's Life of Shelley. Moxon, 1858. 2 vols. 

5. Trelawny's Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. Pickering, 

1878. 2 vols. 

6. Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley. Smith and Elder. 
1 vol. 

7. Medwin's Life of Shelley. Newby, 1847. 2 vols. 

8. Shelley's Early Life, by D. F. McCarthy. Chatto and Windus. 
1 vol. 

9. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Smith and Elder. 

10. W. M. Rossetti's Life of Shelley, included in the edition above 
cited, No 3. 

11. Shelley, a Critical Biography, by G. B. Smith. David Douglas, 
1877. 

12. Relics of Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862. 

13. Peacock's Articles on Shelley in Eraser's Magazine, 1858 and 
i860. 

14. Shelley in Pall Mall, by R. Garnett, in MacmUlaris Magazine, 
June, i860. 

15. Shelley's Last Days, by R. Garnett, in the Fortnightly Review, 
June, 1878. 

16. Two Lectures on Shelley, by W M. Rossetti, in the University 
Magazine, February and March, 1878. 



. 



SHELLEY. ; 

CHAPTER I. 

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable ; yet no 
man, probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose 
dawning gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from 
earth while yet the light that shone in them was crescent. That 
the world should know Marlowe and Giorgione, Raphael and 
Mozart, only by the products of their early manhood, is indeed a 
cause for lamentation, when we remember what the long lives of a 
Bach and Titian, a Michelangelo and Goethe, held in reserve for 
their maturity and age. It is of no use to persuade ourselves, as 
some have done, that we possess the best work of men untimely 
slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the com- 
position of CEdipus ; had Handel never merged the fame of his 
forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios ; had Mil- 
ton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with 
equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. 
And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how falla- 
cious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact 
that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief 
moment, and withdrawn before his spring-time has brought forth 
the fruits of summer, we must bow in silence to the law of waste 
that rules inscrutably in nature. 

Such reflections are forced upon us by the lives of three great 
English poets of this century. Byron died when he was thirty-six, 
Keats when he was twenty-five, and Shelley when he was on the 
point of completing his thirtieth year. Of the three, Keats enjoyed 
the briefest space for the development of his extraordinary powers. 
His achievement, perfect as it is in some poetic qualities, remains 
so immature and incomplete that no conjecture can be hazarded 
about his future. Byron lived longer, and produced more than his 
brother poets. Yet he was extinguished when his genius was still 
ascendant, when his "swift and fair creations " were issuing like 
worlds from an archangel's hands. In his case we have perhaps 
only to deplore the loss of masterpieces that might have equalled, 



IO SHELLEY. 

but could scarcely have surpassed, what we possess. Shelley's 
early death is more to be regretted. Unlike Keats and Byron, he 
died by a mere accident. His faculties were far more complex, 
and bis aims were more ambitious than theirs. He therefore 
needed length of years for their co-ordination ; and if a fuller life 
had been allotted him, we have the certainty that from the dis- 
cords of his youth he would have wrought a clear and lucid har- 
mony. 

These sentences form a somewhat gloomy prelude to a bio- 
graphy. Yet the student of Shelley's life, the sincere admirer of 
his genius, is almost forced to strike a solemn key-note at the out- 
set. We are not concerned with one whose " little world of man " 
for good or ill was perfected, but with one whose growth was in- 
terrupted just before the synthesis of which his powers were cap- 
able had been accomplished. 

August 4, 1792, is one of the most memorable dates in the his- 
tory of English literature. On this day Percy Bysshe Shelley was 
born at Field Place, near Horsham, in the county of Sussex. His 
father, named Timothy, was the eldest son of Bysshe Shelley, 
Esquire, of Goring Castle, in the same county. The Shelley 
family could boast of great antiquity and considerable wealth. 
Without reckoning earlier and semi-legendary honours, it may here 
be recorded that it is distinguished in the elder branch by one 
baronetcy dating from 161 1, and by a second in the younger dating 
from 1806. In the latter year the poet's grandfather received this 
honour through the influence of his friend the Duke of Norfolk. 
Mr. Timothy Shelley was born in the year 1753, and in 1791 he 
married Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold, Esquire, a lady of 
great beauty, aad endowed with fair intellectual ability, though not 
of a literary temperament. The first child of this marriage was 
the poet, named Bysshe in compliment to his grandfather, the then 
living head of the family, and Percy because of some remote con- 
nexion with the ducal house of Northumberland. Four daughters, 
Elizabeth, Mary, Hellen, and Margaret, and one son, John, who 
died in the year 1866, were the subsequent issue of Mr. Timothy 
Shelley's marriage. In the year 181 5, upon the death of his- father, 
he succeeded to the baronetcy, which passed, after his own death, 
to his grandson, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, as the 
poet's only surviving son. 

Before quitting, once and for all, the arid region of genealogy, 
it may be worth mentioning that Sir Bysshe Shelley by his second 
marriage with Miss Elizabeth Jane Sydney Perry, heiress of Pens- 
hurst, became the father of five children, the eldest son of whom 
assumed the name of Shelley-Sidney, received a baronetcy, and 
left a son, Philip Charles Sidney, who was created Lord De l'Isle 
and Dudley. Such details are not without a certain value, inas- 
much as they prove that the poet, who won for his ancient and 
honourable house a fame far more illustrious, than titles can confer, 
was sprung from a man of no small personal force and worldly 
greatness. Sir Bysshe Shelley owed his position in society, the 



SHELLEY. II 

wealth he accumulated, and the honours he transmitted to two 
families, wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he 
bore a name already distinguished in the annals of the English 
landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune under conditions 
of some difficulty. He was born in North America, and began 
life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is also a legend of his 
having made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth in 
America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the beauty of 
his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his will, 
that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two Eng- 
lish heiresses ; and, having begun the world with nothing, he left 
it at the age of seventy-four, bequeathing 300,000/. in the English 
Funds, together with estates worth 20,000/. a year to his descend- 
ants. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was therefore born in the purple of the 
English squirearchy ; but never assuredly did the old tale of the 
swan hatched with the hen's brood of ducklings receive a more 
emphatic illustration than in this case. Gifted with the untameable 
individuality of genius, and bent on piercing to the very truth 
beneath all shams and fictions woven by society and ancient usage, 
he was driven by the circumstances of his birth and his surround- 
ings into an exaggerated warfare with the world's opinion. His 
too frequent tirades against — 

The Queen of Slaves, 
The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, 
Custom, — 

owed much of their asperity to the early influences brought to bear 
upon him by relatives who prized their position in society, their 
wealth, and the observance of conventional decencies, above all 
other things. 

Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man ; 
but he was everything which the poet's father ought not to have 
been. As member for the borough of Shoreham, he voted blindly 
with his party ; and that party looked to nothing beyond the inter- 
ests of the gentry and the pleasure of the Duke of Norfolk. His 
philosophy was limited to a superficial imitation of Lord Chester- 
field, whose style he pretended to affect in his familiar correspond- 
ence, though his letters show that he lacked the rudiments alike of 
logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be summed 
up in Clough's epigram : — 

.' 7*51 

At church on Sunday to attend 

Will serve to keep the world your friend. 

His morality in like manner was purely conventional, as may be 
gathered from his telling his eldest son that he would never pardon 
a mesalliance, but would provide for as many illegitimate children 
as he choose to have. For the rest, he appears to have been a 
fairly good landlord, and a not unkind father, sociable and hospit- 



12 



SHELLEY 



able, somewhat vain and occasionally odd in manner, but qualified 
for passing muster with the country gentlemen around him. In 
the capacity to understand a nature which deviated from the ordi- 
nary type so remarkably as Shelley's, he was utterly deficient ; and 
perhaps we ought to regard it as his misfortune that fate made him 
the father of a man who was among the greatest portents of origin- 
ality and unconventionality that this century has seen. Toward an 
ordinary English youth, ready to sow his wild oats at college, and 
willing to settle at the proper age and take his place upon the 
bench of magistrates, Sir Timothy Shelley would have shown him- 
self an indulgent father; and it must be conceded by the poet's 
biographer that if Percy Bysshe had but displayed tact and con- 
sideration on his side, many of the misfortunes which signalized 
his relations to his father would have been avoided. 

Shelley passed his childhood at Field Place, and when he was 
about six years old began to be taught, together with his sisters, 
by Mr. Edwards, a clergyman who lived at Warnham. What is re- 
corded of these early years we owe to the invaluable communica- 
tions of his sister Hellen. The difference of age between her and 
her brother Bysshe obliges us to refer her recollections to a some- 
what later period — probably to the holidays he spent away from 
Sion House and Eton. Still, since they introduce us to the do- 
mestic life of his then loved home, it may be proper to make quota- 
tions from them in this place. Miss Shelley tells us that her 
brother "would frequently come to the nursery, and was full of a 
peculiar kind of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was 
rebuked, was running a stick through the ceiling of a low passage 
to find some new chamber, which could be made effective for some 
flights of his vivid imagination." He was very much attached to 
his sisters, and used to entertain them with stories, in which " an 
alchemist, old and grey, with a long beard," who was supposed to 
abide mysteriously in the garret of Field Place, played a prominent 
part. " Another favourite theme was the ■ Great Tortoise/ that 
lived in Warnham Pond ; and any unwonted noise was accounted 
for by the presence of this great beast, which was made into the 
fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To 
his friend Hogg, in after years, Shelley often spoke about another 
reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the " Old Snake " who 
had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. 
This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's 
scythe ; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reason- 
ably be conjectured that Shelley's peculiar sympathy for snakes 
was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's favourite. Some 
of the games he invented to please his sisters were grotesque, and 
some both perilous and terrifying. " We dressed ourselves in 
strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, and Bysshe would 
take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable liquid, and carry 
it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." Shelley often 
took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and fence, 
carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their fatigue 



—m 



SHELLEY. 13 

required it. At this time " his figure was slight and beautiful,— his 
hands were models, and his feet are treading the earth again in 
one of his race ; his eyes too have descended in their wild fixed beauty 
to the same person. As a child, I have heard that his skin was 
like snow, and bright ringlets covered his head." Here is a little 
picture which brings the boy vividly before our eyes : " Bysshe 
ordered clothes according to his own fancy at Eton, and the beauti- 
fully fitting silk pantaloons, as he stood as almost all men and boys 
do, with their coat-tails near the fire, excited my silent though ex- 
cessive admiration.*' 

When he was ten years of age, Shelley went to school at Sion 
House, Brentford, an academy kept by Dr. Greenlaw, and frequented 
by the sons of London tradesmen, who proved but uncongenial 
companions to his gentle spirit. It is fortunate for posterity that 
one of his biographers, his second cousin Captain Medwin, was his 
schoolfellow at Sion House ; for to his recollections we owe some 
details of great value. Medwin tells us that Shelley learned the 
classic languages almost by intuition, while he seemed to be spend- 
ing his time in dreaming, now watching the clouds as they sailed 
across the school-room window, and now scribbling sketches of fir- 
trees and cedars in memory of Field Place. At this time he was 
subject to sleep-walking, and, if we may credit this biographer, he 
often lost himself in reveries not far removed from trance. His fa- 
vourite amusement was novel-reading ; and to the many " blue 
books" from the Minerva press devoured by him in his boyhood, we 
may ascribe the style and tone of his first compositions. For phy- 
sical sports he showed no inclination. " He passed among his 
school-fellows as a strange and unsocial being ; for when a holiday 
relieved us from our tasks, and the other boys were engaged in 
such sports as the narrow limits of our prison-court allowed, Shel- 
ley, who entered into none of them, would pace backwards and 
forwards — I think I see him now — along the southern wall, indulg- 
ing in various vague and undefined ideas, the chaotic elements, if 
I may say so, of what afterwards produced so beautiful a world." 

Two of Shelley's most important biographical compositions un- 
doubtedly refer to this period of his boyhood. The first is the 
passage in the Prelude to Laon a7id Cythna which describes his 
suffering among the unsympathetic inmates of a school — 

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first 
The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. 
I do remember well the hour which burst 
My spirit's sleep ; a fresh May-dawn it was, 
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, 
And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose 
From the near school-room, voices, that, alas ^ 
Were but one echo from a world of woes — 
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 

And then I clasped my hands and looked around — 
— But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 



1 4 SHELLEY. 

Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground- 
So without shame I spake : — " I will be wise, 
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
Without reproach or check." I then controlled 
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 

And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, 
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
I cared to learn, but from that secret store 
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 
It might walk forth to war among mankind. 
Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more 
Within me, till there came upon my mind 
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 

The second is a fragment on friendship preserved by Hogg, 
After defining that kind of passionate attachment which often pre- 
cedes love in fervent natures, he proceeds: "I remember forming 
an attachment of this kind at school. I cannot recall to my memory 
the precise epoch at which this took place; but I imagine it must 
have been at the age of eleven or twelve. The object of these 
sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently 
generous, brave, and gentle ; and the elements of human feeling 
seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded within 
him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, inex- 
pressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with 
him since my school-boy days ; but either I confound my present 
recollections with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a 
source of honour and utility to everyone around him. The tones 
of his voice were so soft and winning, that every word pierced into 
my heart; and their pathos was so deep, that in listening to him 
the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the 
being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friend- 
ship." How profound was the impression made on his imagination 
and his feelings by this early friendship, may again be gathered 
from a passage in his note upon the antique group of Bacchus and 
Ampelus at Florence. " Look, the figures are walking with a 
sauntering and idle pace, and talking to each other as they walk, 
as you may have seen a younger and an elder boy at school, walk- 
ing in some grassy spot of the playground with that tender friend- 
ship for each other which the age inspires." 

These extracts prove beyond all question that the first contact 
with the outer world called into activity two of Shelley's strongest 
moral qualities — hfs hatred of tyranny and brutal force in any form, 
and his profound sentiment of friendship. The admiring love of 
women, which marked him no less strongly, and which made him 
second only to Shakespeare in the sympathetic delineation of a 
noble feminine ideal, had been already developed by his deep affec* 



SHELLEY. I5 

tion for his mother and sisters. It is said that he could not re- 
ceive a letter from them without manifest joy. 

"Shelley," says Medwin, "was at this time tall for his age, 
slightly and delicately built, and rather narrow-chested, with a 
complexion fair and ruddy, a face rather long than oval. His feat- 
ures, not regularly handsome, were set off by a profusion of silky 
brown hair, that curled naturally. The expression of his coun- 
tenance was one of exceeding sweetness and innocence. His blue 
eyes were very large and prominent. They were at times, when 
he was abstracted, as he often was in contemplation, dull, and as 
it were, insensible to external objects ; at others they flashed with 
the fire of intelligence. His voice was soft and low, but broken in 
its tones, — when anything much interested him, harsh and immodu- 
lated ; and this peculiarity he never lost. He was naturally calm, 
but when he heard of or read of some flagrant act of injustice, op- 
pression, or cruelty, then indeed the sharpest marks of horror and 
indignation were visible in his countenance." 

Such as the child was, we shall find the man to have remained 
unaltered through the short space of life allowed him. Loving, 
innocent, sensitive, secluded from the vulgar concerns of his com- 
panions, strongly moralised after a peculiar and inborn type of ex- 
cellence, drawing his inspirations from Nature and from his own 
soul in solitude, Shelley passed across the stage of this world, 
attended by a splendid vision which sustained him at a perilous 
height above the kindly race of men. The penalty of this isolation 
he suffered in many painful episodes. The reward he reaped in a 
measure of more authentic prophecy, and in a nobler realization of 
his best self, than could be claimed by any of his immediate con- 
temporaries. 



l6 SHELLEY. 



CHAPTER II. 

ETON AND OXFORD. 

In 1805 Shelley went from Sion House to Eton. At this time 
Dr. Keate was headmaster, and Shelley's tutor was a Mr. Bethel, 
" one of the dullest men in the establishment." At Eton Shelley 
was not popular either wita his teachers or his elder school-fellows, 
although the boys of his own age are said to have adored him. 
" He was all passion," writes Mrs. Shelley; "passionate in his re- 
sistance to an injury, passionate in his love : " and this vehemence 
of temperament he displayed by organizing a rebellion against fag- 
ging, which no doubt won for him the applause of his juniors and 
equals. It was not to be expected that a lad intolerant of rule and 
disregardful of restriction, who neglected punctuality in the per- 
formance of his exercises, while he spent his leisure in translating 
half of Pliny's history, should win the approbation of pedagogues. 
At the same time the inspired opponent of the fagging system, 
the scorner of games and muscular amusements, could not hope to 
find much favour with such martinets of juvenile convention as a 
public school is wont to breed. At Eton, as elsewhere, Shelley's 
ancompromising spirit brought him into inconvenient contact with a 
world of vulgar usage, while his lively fancy invested the common- 
places of reality with dark hues borrowed from his own imagina- 
tion. Mrs. Shelley says of him, " Tamed by affection, but uncon- 
quered by blows, what chance was there that Shelley should be 
happy at, a public school ? " This sentence probably contains the 
pith of what he afterwards remembered of his own school life, and 
there is no doubt that a nature like his, at once loving and high- 
spirited, had much to suffer. It was a mistake, however, to sup- 
pose that at Eton there were any serious blows to bear, or to 
assume that laws of love which might have led a spirit so gentle 
as Shelley's, were adapted to the common stuff of which the Eng- 
lish boy is formed. .The latter mistake Shelley made continually 
throughout his youth ; and only the advance of years tempered his 
passionate enthusiasm into a sober zeal for the improvement of 
mankind by rational methods. We may also trace at this early 
epoch of his life that untamed intellectual ambition — that neglect 
of the immediate and detailed for the transcendental and universal 
— which was a marked characteristic of his genius, leading him to 
fly at the highest while he overleaped the facts of ordinary human 
life. " From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, " all his amuse- 



SHELLEY. 



17 



ments and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the 
term, lawless nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a 
boy, but as a man ; and so with manly powers and childish wit, he 
dared and achieved attempts that none of his comrades could even 
have conceived. His understanding and the early development of 
imagination never permitted him to mingle in childish plays ; and 
his natural aversion to tyranny prevented him from paying due at- 
tention to his school duties. But he was always actively em- 
ployed ; and although his endeavours were prosecuted with puerile 
precipitancy, yet his aim and thoughts were constantly directed to 
those great objects which have employed the thoughts of the 
greatest among men ; and though his studies were not followed up 
according to school discipline, they were not the less dilligently 
applied to." This high-soaring ambition was the source both of his 
weakness and his strength in art, as well as in his commerce with 
the world of men. The boy who despised discipline and sought to 
extort her secrets from nature by magic, was destined to become 
the philanthropist who dreamed of revolutionising society by elo- 
quence, and the poet who invented in Prometheus Unbound 'forms 
of grandeur too colossal to be animated with dramatic life. 

A strong interest in experimental science had been already 
excited in him at Sion House by the exhibition of an orrery; and 
this interest grew into a passion at Eton. Experiments in chemis- 
try and electricity, of the simpler and more striking kind, gave him 
intense pleasure — the more so perhaps because they were for- 
bidden. On one occasion he set the, trunk of an old tree on fire 
with a burning-glass ; on another, while he was amusing himself 
with a blue flame, his tutor came into the room and received a 
severe shock from a highly-charged Leyden jar. During the 
holidays Shelley carried on the same pursuits at Field Place. " His 
own hands and clothes," says Miss Shelley, "were constantly 
stained and corroded with acids, and it only seemed too probable 
that some day the house would be burned down, or some serious 
mischief happen to himself or others from the explosion of com- 
bustibles." This taste for science Shelley long retained. If we 
may trust Mr. Hogg's memory, the first conversation which that 
friend had with him at Oxford consisted almost wholly of an im- 
passioned monologue from Shelley on the revolution to be wrought 
by science in all realms of thought. His imagination was fas- 
cinated by the boundless vistas opened to the student of chemistry. 
When he first discovered that the four elements were not final, it 
gave him the acutest pleasure : and this is highly characteristic of 
the genius which was always seeking to transcend and reach the 
life of life withdrawn from ordinary gaze. On the other hand he 
seems to have delighted in the toys of science, playing with a solar 
microscope, and mixing strangest compounds in his crucibles, with- 
out taking the trouble to study any of its branches systematically. 
In his later years he abandoned these pursuits. But a charming 
reminiscence of them occurs in that most delightful of his familiar 
poems, the Letter to Maria Gisborne. 

2 



^ SHELLEY. 

While translating Pliny and dabbling in chemistry, Shelley was 
not wholly neglectful of Etonian studies. He acquired a fluent, if 
not a correct knowledge of both Greek and Latin, and astonished 
his contemporaries by the facility with which he produced verses 
in the latter language. His powers of memory were extraordinary, 
and the rapidity with which he read a book, taking in seven or 
eight lines at a glance, and seizing the sense upon the hint of 
leading words, was no less astonishing. Impatient speed and in- 
difference to minutiae were indeed among the cardinal qualities of 
his intellect. To them we may trace not only the swiftness of his 
imaginative flight, but also his frequent satisfaction with the some- 
what less than perfect in artistic execution. 

That Shelley was not wholly friendless or unhappy at Eton 
may be gathered from numerous small circumstances. Hogg says 
that his Oxford rooms were full of handsome leaving books, and 
that he was frequently visited by old Etonian acquaintances. We 
are also told that he spent the 40/. gained by his first novel, Zas- 
trozzi, on a farewell supper to eight school-boy friends. A few 
lines, too, might be quoted from his own poem, the Boat on the 
Serchio, to prove that he did not entertain a merely disagreeable 
memory of his school life.* Yet the general experience of Eton 
must have been painful ; and it is sad to read of this gentle and 
pure spirit being goaded by his coarser comrades, into fury, or 
coaxed to curse his father and the king for their amusement. It 
may be worth mentioning that he was called " the Atheist " at 
Eton ; and though Hogg explains this by saying that " the Athe- 
ist " was an official character among the boys, selected from time 
to time for his defiance of authority, yet it is not improbable that 
Shelley's avowed opinions may even then have won for him a title 
which he proudly claimed in after-life. To allude to his boyish 
incantations and' nocturnal commerce with fiends and phantoms 
would scarcely be needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply 
tinged his imagination. While describing the growth of his own 
genius in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he makes the following 
references to circumstances which might otherwise be trivial : — 

While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped _ 

Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, 

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, 

I was not heard, I saw then not — 

When, musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to L ing 

News of birds and blossoming, — 

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy . 

Among the Eton tutors was one whose name will always be 
revered by Shelley's worshippers ; for he alone discerned the rare 

* Forman's edition, vol. iv. p. 145. 



I 



SHELLEY, 



*9 



gifts of the strange and solitary boy, and Shelley loved him. Dr. 
Lind was an old man, a physician, and a student of chemistry. 
Shelley spent long hours at his house, conversing with him, and re- 
ceiving such instruction in philosophy and science as the grey- 
haired scholar could impart. The affection which united them 
must have been of no common strength or quality ; for when Shel- 
ley lay ill of a fever at Field Place, and had conceived the probably 
ill-founded notion that his father intended to place him in a mad- 
house, he managed to convey a message to his friend at Eton, on 
the receipt of which Dr. Lind travelled to Horsham, and by his 
sympathy and skill restored the sick boy's confidence. It may in- 
cidentally be pointed out that this story, credited as true by Lady 
Shelley in her Memorials, shows how early an estrangement had 
begun between the poet and his father. We look, moreover, vainly 
for that mother's influence which might have been so beneficial to 
the boy in whom " love and life were twins, born at one birth." 
From Dr. Lind Shelley not only received encouragement to pursue 
his chemical studies ; but he also acquired the habit of correspond- 
ing with persons unknown to him, whose opinions he might be 
anxious to discover or dispute. This habit, as we shall see in the 
sequel, determined Shelley's fate on two important occasions of his 
life. In return for the help extended to him at Eton, Shelley con- 
ferred undying fame on Dr. Lind ; the characters of Zonaras in 
Prince Athanase, and of the hermit in Laon and Cythna, are por» 
traits painted by the poet of his boyhood's friend. 

The months which elapsed between Eton and Oxford were an 
important period in Shelley's life. At this time a boyish liking for 
his cousin, Harriet Grove, ripened into real attachment ; and though 
there was perhaps no formal engagement between them, the parents 
on both sides looked with approval on their love. What it con- 
cerns us to know about this early passion, is given in a letter from 
a brother of Miss Grove. " Bysshe was at that time (just after 
leaving Eton) more attached to my sister Harriet than I can ex- 
press, and I recollect well the moonlight walks we four had at 
Strode and also at St. Irving's ; that, I think, was the name of the 
place, then the Duke of Norfolk's, at Horsham." For some time 
after the date mentioned in this letter, Shelley and Miss Grove 
kept up an active correspondence ; but the views he expressed on 
speculative subjects soon began to alarm her. She consulted her 
mother and her father, and the engagement was broken off. The 
final separation does not seem to have taken place until the date of 
Shelley's expulsion from Oxford ; and not the least cruel of the 
pangs he had to suffer at that period, was the loss of one to whom 
he had given his whole heart unreservedly. The memory of Miss 
Grove long continued to haunt his imagination, nor is there much 
doubt that his first unhappy marriage was contracted while the 
wound remained unhealed. The name of Harriet Westbrook and 
something in her face reminded him of Harriet Grove; it is even 
still uncertain to which Harriet the dedication of Queen Mab is ad- 
dressed.* 

* See Medwin, vol. i. p. 68. 



2 o SHELLEY. 

In his childhood Shelley scribbled verses with fluency by no 
means unusual in the case of forward boys ; and we have seen that 
at Sion House he greedily devoured the sentimental novels of the 
day. His favourite poets at the time of which I am now writing, 
were Monk Lewis and Southey ; his favourite books in prose were 
romances by Mrs. Radcliffe and Godwin. He now began to yearn 
for fame and publicity. Miss Shelley speaks of a play written by 
her brother and her sister Elizabeth, which was sent to Matthews 
the comedian, and courteously returned as unfit for acting. She 
also mentions a little volume of her own verses, which the boy had 
printed with the tell-tale name of "H — 11— n Sh— 11 — y" on the 
title-page. Medwin gives a long account of a poem on the story of 
the Wandering Jew, composed by him in concert with Shelley dur- 
ing the winter of 1809 — 1810. They sent the manuscript to 
Thomas Campbell, who returned it with the observation that it 
contained but two good lines : — 

It seem'd as if an angel's sigh 

Had breathed the plaintive symphony. 

Undeterred by this adverse criticism, Shelley subsequently of- 
fered The Wandering Jew to two publishers, Messrs. Ballantyne 
and Co. of Edinburgh, and Mr. Stockdale of Pall Mall; but it re- 
mained in MS. at Edinburgh till 1831, when a portion was printed 
in Eraser's Magazine. 

Just before leaving Eton he finished his novel Jof -Zastrozzt, 
which some critics trace to its source in Zofloya the Moor, perused 
by him at Sion House. The most astonishing fact about this inco- 
herent medley of mad sentiment is that it served to furnish forth 
the 40/. Eton supper already spoken of, that it was duly ushered into 
the world of letters by Messrs. Wilkie and Robinson on the 5th of 
June, 1 810, and that it was seriously reviewed. The dates of 
Shelley's publications now come fast and frequent. In the late 
summer of 1810 he introduced himself to Mr. J. J. Stockdale, the 
then fashionable publisher of poems and romances, at his house of 
business in Pall Mall. With characteristic impetuosity the young 
author implored assistance in a difficulty. He had commissioned 
a printer in Horsham to strike off the astounding number of 1480 
copies of a volume of poems ; and he had no money to pay the 
printer's bill. Would Stockdale help him out of this dilemma, by 
taking up the quires and duly ushering the book into the world ? 
Throughout his life Shelley exercised a wonderful fascination over 
the people with whom he came in contact, and almost always won 
his way with them as much by personal charm as by determined 
and impassioned will. Accordingly on this occasion Stockdale 
proved accommodating. The Horsham printer was somehow 
satisfied ; and on the 17th of September, 1810, the little book came 
out with the title of Original Poetry, by Victor and Cazire. This 
volume has disappeared ; and much fruitless conjecture has been 
expended upon the question of Shelley's collaborator in his juve- 



SHELLEY. 21 

fcile attempt. Cazire stands for some one ; probably it is meant to 
represent a woman's name, and that woman may have been either 
Elizabeth Shelley or Harriet Grove. The Original Poetry had 
only been launched a week, when Stockdale discovered on a closer 
inspection of the book that it contained some verses well known to 
the world as the production of M. G. Lewis. He immediately com- 
municated with Shelley, and the whole edition was suppressed — not, 
however, before about one hundred copies had passed into circula- 
tion. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty larceny 
was due, we know not , but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied 
Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason 
to break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he 
issued Shelley's second novel from his press, and entered into ne- 
gotiations with him for the publication of more poetry. The new 
romance was named St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian. This tale, no 
less unreadable than Zastrozzi, and even more chaotic in its plan, 
contaifted a good deal of poetry, which has been incorporated in 
the most recent editions of Shelley's works. A certain interest at- 
taches to it as the first known link between Shelley and William 
Godwin, for it was composed under the influence of the latter's 
novel, St. Leon. The title, moreover, carries us back to those 
moonlight walks with Harriet Grove alluded to above. Shelley's 
earliest attempts in literature have but little value for the student 
of poetry, except in so far as they illustrate the psychology of 
genius and its wayward growth. Their intrinsic merit is almost 
less than nothing, and no one could predict from their perusal the 
course which the future poet of The Cenci and Epipsychidion was 
to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great 
qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want 
of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. 
But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cau- 
tious critic will only find food in Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne for won- 
dering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain con- 
cealed within a germ apparently so barren. There is even less of 
the real Shelley discernible in these productionSj than of the real 
Byron in the Hours of Idleness. 

In the Michaelmas Term of 1810 Shelley was matriculated as 
a Commoner of University College, Oxford ; and very soon after 
his arrival he made the acquaintance of a man who was destined 
to play a prominent part in his subsequent history, and to bequeath 
to posterity the most brilliant, if not in all respects the most trust- 
worthy, record of his marvellous youth. Thomas Jefferson Hogg 
was unlike Shelley in temperament and tastes. His feet were 
always planted on the earth, while Shelley flew aloft to heaven with 
singing robes around him, or the mantle of the prophet on his 
shoulders.* Hogg had much of the cynic in his nature ; he was a 

* He told Trelawny that he had been attracted to Shelley simply by his " rare talents 
as a scholar ; " and Trelawny has recorded his opinion that Hogg's portrait of their friend 
was faithful, in spite of a total want of sympathy with his poetic genius. This testimony 
is extremely valuable. 



22 SHELLEY. 

shrewd man of the world, and a caustic humourist Positive and 
practical, he chose the beaten path of life, rose to eminence as a 
lawyer, and cherished the Church and State opinions of a staunch 
Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine poet, 
he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved 
for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable 
for the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate 
Shelley's course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. 
No novel indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affec- 
tionate and satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and deli- 
cately shaded, of the student life enjoyed together for a few short 
months by the inseparable friends. To make extracts from a 
masterpiece cf such consummate workmanship is almost painful. 
Future biographers of Shelley, writing on a scale adequate to the 
greatness of their subject, will be content to lay their pens down 
for a season at this point, and let Hogg tell the tale in his own way- 
ward but inimitable fashion. I must confine myself to a few quo- 
tations and a barren abstract, referring my readers to the ever- 
memorable pages 48 — 286 of Hogg's first volume, for the life that 
cannot be transferred to these. 

" At the commencement of Michaelmas term," says this biog- 
rapher, " that is, at the end of October, in the year 1810, I happened 
one day to sit next to a freshman at dinner ; it was his first appear- 
ance in hall. His figure was slight, and his aspect remarkably 
youthful, even at our table, where all were very young. He seemed 
thoughtful and absent. He ate little, and had no acquaintance with 
any one." The two young men began a conversation, which turned 
upon the respective merits of German and Italian poetry, a subject 
they neither of them knew anything about. After dinner it was 
continued in Hogg's rooms, where Shelley soon led the talk to his 
favourite topic of science. " As I felt, in truth, but a slight inter- 
est in the subject of his conversation, I had leisure to examine, 
and I may add, to admire, the appearance of my very extraordinary 
guest. It was a sum of many contradictions. His figure was slight 
and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. 
He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low 
stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the 
most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, 
unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, oc- 
casionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. 
His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red 
and white ; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, 
having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. His features, 
his whole face, and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually 
small ; yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was 
long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may 
use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with 
his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks uncon- 
sciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. In times when 
it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in 






SHELLEY. 



23 



costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our 
soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not 
symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the 
whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an 
enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met 
with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less 
beautiful than the intellectual ; for there was a softness, a delicacy, 
a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that 
air of profound religious veneration, that characterises the best 
works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their 
whole souls), of the great masters of Florence and of Rome. I 
recognised the very peculiar expression in these wonderful produc- 
tions long afterwards, and with a satisfaction mingled with much 
sorrow, for it was after the decease of him in whose countenance 
I had first observed it." 

In another place Hogg gives some details which complete the 
impression of Shelley's personal appearance, and which are fully 
corroborated by Trelawny's recollections of a later date. " There 
were many striking contrasts in the character and behaviour of 
Shelley, and one of the most remarkable was a mixture, or alterna- 
tion, of awkwardness with agility — of the clumsy with the graceful. 
He would stumble in stepping across the floor of a drawing-room ; 
he would trip himself up on a smooth-shaven grass-plot, and he would 
tumble in the most inconceivable manner in ascending the commo- 
dious, facile, and well-carpeted staircase of an elegant mansion, so 
as to bruise his nose or his lip on the upper steps, or to tread upon 
his hands, and even occasionally to disturb the composure of a 
well-bred footman ; on the contrary, he would often glide without 
collision through a crowded assembly, thread with unerring dex- 
terity a most intricate path, or securely and rapidly tread the most 
arduous and uncertain ways." 

This word-portrait corresponds in its main details to the de- 
scriptions furnished by other biographers, who had the privilege 
of Shelley's friendship. His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark 
and lustrous. His hair was brown ; but very early in life it be- 
came grey, while his unwrinkled face retained to the last a look of 
wonderful youth. It is admitted on all sides that no adequate 
picture was ever painted of him. Mulready is reported to have 
said that he was too beautiful to paint. And yet, although so 
singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity of feature 
or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal fascin- 
ation. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's 
voice " was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh, and dis- 
cordant." This is strongly stated ; but, though the terms are cer- 
tainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first impres- 
sion made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable mass of 
convergent testimony to the fact that Shelley's voice was high 
pitched, and that when he became excited, he raised it to a scream. 
The epithets " shrill," " piercing," "penetrating," frequently recur in 
the descriptions given of it. At the same time its quality seems to 



24 SHELLEY. 

have been less dissonant than thrilling ; there is abundance of evi- 
dence to prove that he could modulate it exquisitely in the reading 
of poetry, and its tone proved no obstacle to the persuasive charms 
of his eloquence in conversation. Like all finely tempered natures, 
he vibrated in harmony with the subjects of his thought. Excite- 
ment made his utterance shrill and sharp. Deep feeling or the 
sense of beauty lowered its tone to richness ; but the timbre was 
always acute, in sympathy with his intense temperament. All was 
of one piece in Shelley's nature. This peculiar voice, varying from 
moment to moment, and affecting different sensibilities in divers 
ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine- 
drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpita- 
ting verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, 
befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights of 
human thought. 

The acquaintance begun that October evening soon ripened 
into close friendship. Shelley and Hogg from this time forward 
spent a large part of those days and nights together in common 
studies, walks, and conversations. It was their habit to pass the 
morning, each in his own rooms, absorbed in private reading. At 
one o'clock they met and lunched, and then started for long ram- 
bles in the country. Shelley frequently carried pistols with him 
upon these occasions, and would stop to fix his father's franks 
upon convenient trees and shoot at them. The practice of pistol- 
shooting, adopted so early in his life, was afterwards one of his 
favourite amusements in the company of Byron. Hogg says that 
in his use of fire-arms he was extraordinarily careless. " How 
often have I lamented that Nature, which so rarely bestows upon 
the world a creature endowed with such marvellous talents, un- 
graciously rendered the gift less precious by implanting a fatal 
taste for perilous recreations, and a thoughtlessness in the pursuit 
of them, that often caused his existence from one day to another 
to seem in itself miraculous." On their return from these excur- 
sions the two friends, neither of whom cared for dining in the 
College Hall, drank tea and supped together, Shelley's rooms being 
generally chosen as the scene of their s}'mposia. 

These rooms are described as a perfect palace of confusion — 
chaos on chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical 
machines, unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes 
by acids. It was perilous to use the poet's drinking-vessels, less, 
perchance a seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should 
lurk at the bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors were used to 
cut the lids of wooden boxes, and valuable books served to sup- 
port lamps or crucibles ; for in his vehement precipitation Shelley 
always laid violent hands on what he found convenient to the pur 
pose of the moment. Here the friends talked and read until late 
in the night. Their chief studies at this time were in Locke and 
Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward metaphy- 
sical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the 
School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without interim's- 



SHELLEY. 



25 



sion in dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed 
by other testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight of 
the essential bearings of the topic in dispute, never condescended 
to personal or captious arguments, and was Somatically bent on 
following the dialogue wherever it might lead, without regard for 
consequences. Plato was another of their favourite authors ; but 
Hogg expressly tells us that they only approached the divine 
philosopher through the medium of translations. It was not until 
a later period that Shelley studied his dialogues in the original : 
but the substance oi them, seen through Mdme. Dacier's version, 
acted powerfully on the poet's sympathetic intellect. In fact, al- 
though at this time he had adopted the conclusions of materialism, 
he was at heart all through his life an idealist. Therefore the 
mixture of the poet and the sage in Plato fascinated him. The 
doctrine of anamnesis, which offers so strange a vista to specula- 
tive reverie, by its suggestion of an earlier existence in which our 
knowledge was acquired, took a strong hold upon his imagination; 
he would stop in the streets to gaze wistfully at babies, wondering 
whether their newly imprisoned souls were not replete with the 
wisdom stored up in a previous life. 

In the acquisition of knowledge he was then as ever unrelax- 
ing. " No student ever read more assiduously. He was to be 
found, book in hand, at all hours ; reading in season and out of 
season ; at table, in bed, and especially during a walk ; not only in 
the quiet country, and in retired paths ; not only at Oxford, in the 
public walks, and High Street, but in the most crowded thorough- 
fares of London. Nor was he less absorbed by the volume that 
was open before him, in Cheapside, in Cranbourne Alley, or in 
Bond Street, than in a lonely lane, or a secluded library. Some- 
times a vulgar fellow would attempt to insult or annoy the eccen- 
tric student in passing. Shelley always avoided the malignant in- 
terruption by stepping aside with his vast and quiet agility. " And 
again : — " I never beheld eyes that devoured the pages more vora- 
ciously than his ; I am convinced that two-thirds of the period of 
day and night were often employed in reading. It is no exaggera- 
tion to affirm, that out of the twenty-four hours, he frequently read 
sixteen. At Oxford, his diligence in this respect was exemplary, 
but it greatly increased afterwards, and I sometimes thought that 
he carried it to a pernicious excess : I am sure, at least, that I was 
unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley study was a pas- 
sion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance into a 
thrice-hallowed sanctuary. " The irreverent many cannot com- 
prehend the awe — the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine 
the enthusiasm — nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of 
things visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty emotion that 
inwardly agitated him, when he approached, for the first time, a 
volume which he believed to be replete with the recondite and 
mystic philosophy of antiquity : his cheeks glowed, his eyes be- 
came bright, his whole frame trembled, and his entire attention was 
immediately swallowed up in the depths of contemplation. The 



26 SHELLEY. 

rapid and vigorous conversion of his soul to intellect can only be 
compared with the instantaneous ignition and combustion, which 
dazzle the sight, when a bundle of dry reeds, or other light inflam- 
mable substance, is thrown upon a fire already rich with accumu- 
lated heat." 

As at Eton, so at Oxford, Shelley refused to keep the beaten 
track of prescribed studies, or to run in ordinary grooves of thought. 
The mere fact that Aristotle was a duty, seems to have disgusted 
him with the author of the Organon, from whom, had his works 
been prohibited to undergraduates, he would probably have been 
eager to learn much. For mathematics ancT jurisprudence he 
evinced a marked distaste. The common business of the English 
Parliament had no attraction for him, and he read few newspapers. 
While his mind was keenly interested in great political questions, 
he could not endure the trivial treatment of them in the daily press, 
and cared far more for principles than for the incidents of party 
warfare. Here again he showed that impatience of detail, and that 
audacity of self-reliant genius, which were the source of both his 
weakness and his strength. He used to speak with aversion of a 
Parliamentary career, and told Hogg that though this had been sug- 
gested to him, as befitting his position, by the Duke of Norfolk, he 
could never bring himself to mix with the rabble of the House. It 
is none the less true, however, that he entertained some vague no- 
tion of eventually succeeding to his father's seat. 

Combined with his eager intellectual activity, there was something 
intermittent and fitful in the working of his mental faculties. Hogg, 
in particular, mentions one of his habits in a famous passage, which, 
since it brings the two friends vividly before us, may here be quoted. 
" I was enabled to continue my studies afterwards in the evening, 
in consequence of a very remarkable peculiarity. 'My young and 
energetic friend was then overcome by extreme drowsiness, which 
speedily and completely vanquished him ; he would sleep from two 
to four hours, often so soundly that his slumbers resembled a deep 
lethargy ; he lay occasionally upon the sofa, but more commonly 
stretched upon the rug before a large fire, like a cat ; and his lit- 
tle round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I used to 
wonder how he was able to bear it. Sometimes I have interposed 
some shelter, but rarely with any permanent effect ; for the sleeper 
usually contrived to turn himself, and to roll again into the spot 
where the fire glowed the brightest. His torpor was generally pro- 
found, but he would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long 
while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly compose himself, 
even in the midst of a most animated narrative, or of earnest discus- 
sion ; and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness. in a sweet 
and mighty oblivion, until ten. when he would suddenly start up, 
and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his fingers 
swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a vehement 
argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own composition 
or from the works of others, with rapidity and an energy that were 
often quite painful." 



r 



SHELLEY. 



27 



Shelley's moral qualities are described with no less enthusiasm 
than his intellectual and physical beauty by the friend from whom I 
have already drawn so largely. Love was th : root and basis of his na- 
ture : this love, first developed as domestic affection, next as friend- 
ship, then as a youth's passion, now began to shine with steady 
lustre as an all-embracing devotion to his fellow-men. There is 
something inevitably chilling in the words " benevolence y ' and 
"philanthropy." A disillusioned world is inclined to look with 
languid approbation on the former, and to disbelieve in the latter. 
Therefore I will not use them to describe that intense and growing 
passion of unselfishness, which throughout his life led Shelley to 
find his strongest interests in the joys and sorrows of his fellow- 
creatures, which inflamed his imagination with visions of humanity 
made perfect, and which filled his days with sweet deeds of unnum- 
bered charities. I will rather collect from the pages of his friend's 
biography a few passages recording the first impression of his 
character, the memory of which may be carried by the reader 
through the following brief record of his singular career i — 

"His speculations were as wild as the experience of twenty-one 
years has shown them to be ; but the zealous earnestness for the 
augmentation of knowledge, and the glowing philanthropy and 
boundless benevolence that marked them, and beamed forth in the 
whole deportment of that extraordinary boy, are not less astonishing 
than they would have been if the whole of his glorious anticipations 
had been prophetic ; for these high qualities, at least, I have never 
found a parallel." 

" In no individual perhaps was the moral sense ever more com- 
pletely developed than in Shelley : in no being was the perception 
of right or of wrong more acute." 

" As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the 
vigour of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity 
of his life most conspicuous." 

" I never knew any one so prone to admire as he was, in whom 
the principle of veneration was so strong." 

" I have had the happiness to associate with some of the best 
specimens of gentlemen; but with all due deference for those 
admirable persons (may my candour and my preference be par- 
doned), I can affirm that Shelley was almost the only example I 
have yet found that was never wanting, even in the most minute 
particular, of the infinite and various observances of pure, entire, 
and perfect gentility." 

" Shelley was actually offended, and indeed more indignant 
than would appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of 
his nature, at a coarse and awkward jest, especially if it were im- 
modest, or uncleanly ; in the latter case his anger was unbounded, 
and his uneasiness pre-eminent ; he was, however, sometimes 
vehemently delighted by exquisite and delicate sallies, particularly 
with a fanciful, and perhaps somewhat fantastical facetiousness — 
possibly the more because he was himself utterly incapable of 
pleasantry." 



23 SHELLEY, 

" I never could discern in him any more than two fixed princi« 
pies. The first was a strong irrepressible love of liberty ; of liberty 
in the abstract, and somewhat after the pattern of the ancient repub- 
lics, without reference to the English constitution, respecting which 
he knew little and cared nothing, heeding it not at all. The second 
was an equally ardent love of toleration of all opinions, but more 
especially of religious opinions ; of toleration, complete, entire, 
universal, unlimited ; and, as a deduction and corollary from which 
latter principle, he felt an intense abhorrence of persecution of 
every kind, public or private. " 

The testimony in the foregoing extracts as to Shelley's purity 
and elevation of moral character is all the stronger, because it is 
given by a man not over-inclined to praise, and of a temperament 
as unlike the poet's as possible. If we were to look only upon this 
side of his portrait, we should indeed be almost forced to use the 
language of his^most enthusiastic worshippers, and call him an arch- 
angel. But it 'must be admitted that, though so pure and gentle 
and exalted, Shelley's virtues were marred by his eccentricity, by 
something at times approaching madness, which paralysed his 
efficiency by placing him in a glaringly false relation to some of the 
best men in the world around him. He possessed certain good 
qualities in excess ; for, though it sounds paradoxical, it is none the 
less true that a man may be too tolerant, too fond of liberty : and 
it was precisely the extravagance of these virtues in Shelley which 
drove him into acts and utterances so antagonistic to society as to 
be intolerable. 

Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. 
His genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those 
double stars which dart blue and red rays of light : for it was gov- 
erned by two luminaries, poetry and metaphysics ; and at this time 
the latter seems to have been in the ascendant. It is, however, 
interesting to learn that he read and re-read Landor's Gebir — 
stronger meat than either Southey's epics or the ghost-lyrics of 
Monk Lewis. Hogg found him one day busily engaged in correct 
ing proofs of some original poems. Shelley asked his friend what 
he thought of them, and Hogg answered that it might be possible by 
a little alteration to turn them into capital burlesques. This idea 
took the young poet's fancy ; and the friends between them soon 
effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they 
became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, 
they now bethought them of the proper means of publication. 
Upon whom should the poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolu- 
tionary raving, be fathered ? Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, 
had recently attempted George the Third's life with a carving-knife. 
No more fitting author could be found. They would give their 
pamphlet to the world as her work, edited by an admiring nephew. 
The printer appreciated the joke no less than the authors of it. 
He provided splendid paper and magnificent type ; and before 
long the book of nonsense was in the hands of Oxford readers. It 
sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy ; and, what is hardly 



SHELLEY. 29 

credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. M It 
was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a 
mark of nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste tn 
poetry, and the best criterion of a choice spirit." Such wasthe 
genesis of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, edited 
by John Fitz Victor. The name of the supposititious nephew 
reminds us of Original Poems by Victor and Cazire, and raises the 
question whether the poems in that lost volume may not have 
partly furnished forth this Oxford travesty. 

Shelley's next publication, or quasi-publication, was neither so 
innocent in substance nor so pleasant in its consequences. After 
leaving Eton, he continued the habit, learned from Dr. Lind, of 
corresponding with distinguished persons whem he did not person- 
ally know. Thus we find him about this time addressing Miss 
Felicia Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans) and Leigh Hunt. He 
plied his correspondents with all kinds of questions ; and as the 
dialectical interest was uppermost at Oxford, he now endeavoured 
to engage them in discussions on philosophical and religious topics. 
We have seen that his favourite authors were Locke, Hume, and 
the French materialists. With the impulsiveness peculiar to his 
nature, he adopted the negative conclusions of a shallow nominal- 
istic philosophy. It was a fundamental point with him to regard 
all questions, however sifted and settled by the wise of former ages, 
as still open ; and in his inordinate thirst for liberty, he rejoiced to 
be the Deicide of a pernicious theological delusion. In other 
words, he passed at Oxford by one leap from a state of indifferent- 
ism with regard to Christianity, into an attitude of vehement an- 
tagonism. With a view to securing answers to his missives, he 
printed a short abstract of Hume's and other arguments against the 
existence of a Deity, presented in a series of propositions, and 
signed with a mathematically important " Q. E. D." This docu- 
ment he forwarded to his proposed antagonists, expressing his 
inability to answer its arguments, and politely requesting them to 
help him. When it so happened that any incautious correspond- 
ents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless severity 
upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little pam- 
phlet of two pages was entitled The Necessity of Atheism ; and its 
proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already 
described, is proved by an advertisement (Feb. 9, 181 1) in the 
Oxford University and City Herald. It was not, however, actually 
offered for sale. 

A copy of this syllabus reached a Fellow of another college, 
who made the Master of University acquainted with the fact. On 
the morning of March 25, 1811, Shelley was sent for to the Senior 
Common Room, and asked whether he acknowleged himself to be 
the author of the obnoxious pamphlet. On his refusal to answer 
this question, he was served with a formal sentence of expulsion 
duly drawn up and sealed. The college authorities have been 
blamed for unfair dealing in this matter. It is urged that they 
ought to have proceeded by the legal method of calling witnesses ; 



30 SHELLEY. 






and that the sentence was not only out of all proportion to the 
offence, but that it ought not to have been executed till persuasion 
had been tried. With regard to the former indictment, I do not 
think that a young man still in statu pupillary who refused to purge 
himself of what he must have known to be a serious charge, had any 
reason to expect from his tutors the formalities of an English court 
of law. There is no doubt that the Fellows were satisfied of his 
being the real author ; else they could not have ventured on so 
summary a measure as expulsion. Their question was probably 
intended to give the culprit an occasion for apology, of which they 
foresaw he would not avail himself. With regard to the second, 
it is true that Shelley was amenable to kindness, and that gentle 
and wise treatment from men whom he respected, might possibly 
have brought him to retract his syllabus. But it must be remem- 
bered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart ; and they 
were probably aware of this. He was a dexterous, impassioned 
reasoner, whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such 
atopic. During his short period of residence, moreover, he had not 
shown himself so tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, 
who prefer conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely 
that they were not averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous 
to the peace of their society; and now they had a good occasion. 
Nor was it to be expected that the champion and apostle of Athe- 
ism — and Shelley was certainly both, in spite of Hogg's attempts 
to tone down the purpose of his document — should be unmolested 
in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat livings and ecclesiastical 
dignities. Real blame, however, attaches to these men : first, for 
their dulness to discern Shelley's amiable qualities ; and secondly, 
for the prejudgment of the case implied in the immediate delivery 
of their sentence. Both Hogg and Shelley accused them, besides, 
of a gross brutality, which was, to say the least, unseemly on so 
serious an occasion. At the beginning of this century the learning 
and the manners of the Oxford dons were at a low ebb ; and the 
Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether un- 
justly, ignorantly but after their own kind, in this matter of Shel- 
ley's expulsion. Non ragionam di lor, ?na guarda e passa. 
Hogg, who stood by his friend manfully at this crisis, and dared 
the authorities to deal with him as they had dealt with Shelley, 
adding that they had just as much real proof to act upon in his 
case, and intimating his intention of returning the same answer as 
to the authorship of the pamphlet, was likewise expelled. The 
two friends left Oxford together by the coach on the morning of 
the 26th of March. 

Shelley felt his expulsion acutely. At Oxford he had enjoyed 
the opportunities of private reading which the University afforded 
in those days of sleepy studies and innocuous examinations. He 
delighted in the security of his " oak," and above all things he 
found pleasure in the society of his one chosen friend. He was 
now obliged to exchange these good things for the tumult and dis- 
comfort of London. His father, after clumsily attempting com- 









SHELLEY. 



31 



promises, had forbidden his return to Field Place. The whole 
fabric of his former life was broken up. The last hope of renewing 
his engagement with his cousin had to be abandoned. His pecu- 
niary position was precarious, and in a short time he was destined 
to lose the one friend who had so generously shared his fate. Yet 
the notion of recovering his position as a student in one of our 
great Universities, of softening his father's indignation, or of 
ameliorating his present circumstances by the least concession, 
never seems to have occurred to him. He had suffered in the 
cause of truth and liberty, and he willingly accepted his martyrdom 
for conscience' sake. 



32 



SHELLEY. 



CHAPTER III. 

LIFE IN LONDON AND FIRST MARRIAGE. 

It is of some importance at this point to trace the growth and an* 
alyse the substance of Shelley's atheistical opinions. The cardi- 
nal characteristic of his nature was an implacable antagonism to 
shams and conventions, which passed too easily into impatient re- 
jection of established forms as worse than useless. Born in the 
stronghold of squirearchical prejudices, nursed amid the trivial plati- 
tudes that then passed in England for philosophy, his keen spirit 
flew to the opposite pole of thought with a recoil that carried him 
at first to inconsiderate negation. His passionate love of liberty, 
his loathing for intolerance, his impatience of control for self 
and others, and his vivid logical sincerity, combined to make 
him the Quixotic champion of extreme opinions. He was too 
fearless to be wise, too precipitate to suspend his judgment, too 
convinced of the paramount importance of iconoclasm, to ma- 
ture his views in silence. With the unbounded audacity of youth, 
he hoped to take the fortresses of " Anarch Custom " by storm at 
the first assault. His favourite ideal was the vision of a youth, 
Laon or Lionel, whose eloquence had power to break the bonds of 
despotism, as the sun thaws ice upon an April morning. It was 
enough, he thought, to hurl the glove of defiance boldly at the 
tyrant's face — to sow the Necessity of Atheis7n broadcast on the 
bench of Bishops, and to depict incest in his poetry, not because 
he wished to defend it, but because society must learn to face the 
most abhorent problems with impartiality. Gifted with a touch 
as unerring as Ithuriel's spear for the unmasking of hypocrisy, he 
strove to lay bare the very substance of the soul beneath the crust 
of dogma an€ the froth of traditional beliefs ; nor does it seem to 
have occurred to him that, while he stripped the rags and patches 
that conceal the nakedness of ordinary human nature, he might 
drag away the weft and woof erf nobler thought. In his poet-philos- 
opher's imagination there bloomed a wealth of truth and love and 
beauty so abounding, that behind the mirage he destroyed, he saw 
no blank, but a new Eternal City of the Spirit. He never doubted 
whether his fellow-creatures were certain to be equally fortunate. 

Shelley had no faculty for compromise, no perception of the 
blended truths and falsehoods through which the mind of man 
must gradually win its way from the obscurity of myths into the 
clearness of positive knowledge, for ever toiling and forever foiled, 



SHELLEY. 33 

and forced to content itself with the increasing consciousness of 
limitations. Brimming over with love for men, he was deficient in 
sympathy with the conditions under which they actually think and 
feel. Could he but dethrone the Anarch Custom, the millennium, 
he argued, would immediately arrive ; nor did he stop to think 
how different was the fibre of his ow r n soul from that of the un- 
numbered multitudes around him. In his adoration of what he 
recognised as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified ex- 
perience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a 
paving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no 
place in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncom- 
sromising, shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which 
long centuries of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. 
We who have survived the enthusiasms of that epoch, who are ex- 
hausted with its passions, and who have suffered from its reactive 
impulses, can scarcely comprehend the vivid faith and young-eyed 
joy of aspiration which sustained Shelley in his flight toward the 
region of impossible ideals. For he had a vital faith ; and this 
faith made the ideals he conceived seem possible— faith in the duty 
and desirability of overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel of liberty, 
fraternity, equality; faith in the divine beauty of nature ; faith in a 
love that rules the universe; faith in the perfectibity of man ; faith in 
the omnipresent soul, whereof our souls are atoms ; faith in affec- 
tion as the ruling and co-ordinating substance of morality. The man 
who lived by this faith was in no vulgar sense of the word an 
Atheist. When he proclaimed himself to be one, he pronounced 
his hatred of a gloomy religion, which had been the instrument of 
kings and priests for the enslavement of their fellow-creatures. 
As he told his friend Trelawny, he used the word Atheism " to ex- 
press his abhorrence of superstition ; he took it up as a knight took 
up a gauntlet, in defiance of injustice." But Shelley believed too 
much to be consistently agnostic. He believed so firmly and in- 
tensely in his own religion — a kind of passionate positivism, a 
creed which seemed to have no God because it was all God — that 
he felt convinced he only needed to destroy accepted figments, for 
the light which blazed around him to break through and flood the 
world with^beauty. Shelley can only be called an Atheist, in so far 
as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received conceptions 
of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of cruelty 
who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was 
an Agnostic ortly in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of 
solving the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear 
and fearless utterances upon these points place him in the rank of 
intellectual heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and 
love, was far too religious and too sanguine to merit either epithet 
as vulgarly applied. 

The negative side of Shelley's creed had the moral value which 
attaches to all earnest conviction, plain speech, defiance of conven- 
tion, and enthusiasm for intellectual liberty at any cost. It was 
marred, however, by extravagance, crudity, and presumption, 

3 



34 



SHELLEY. 




Much that he would fain have destroyed because he found it cus- 
tomary, was solid, true and beneficial. Much that he thought it 
desirable to substitute, was visionary, hollow, and pernicious. He 
lacked the touchstone of mature philosophy, whereby to separate 
the pinchbeck from the gold of sbcial usage ; and in his intense en- 
thusiasm he lost his hold on common sense, which might have 
saved him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. The positive 
side of his creed remains precious, not because it was logical, or 
scientific, or coherent, but because it was an ideal, fervently felt, 
and penetrated with the whole life-force of an incomparable nature. 
Such ideals are needed for sustaining man upon his path amid the 
glooms and shadows of impenetrable ignorance. They form the 
seal and pledge of his spiritual dignity, reminding him that he was 
not born to live like brutes, or like the brutes to perish without effort. 

Fatti non f oste a viver come bruti, 
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza. 

These criticisms apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier 
life, when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and 
his confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world 
was overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him 
wisdom without damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his 
first fervent speculations, and mellowed his philosephy. Had he 
lived to a ripe age, there is no saying with what clear and beneficent 
lustre might have shone that light of aspiration which during his 
turpid youth burned somewhat luridly, and veiled its radiance in the 
smoke of mere rebelliousness and contradiction. 

Hogg and Shelley settled in lodgings at No. 15, Poland Street, 
soon after their arrival in London. The name attracted Shelley: 
" it reminded him of Thaddeus of 'Warsaw and of freedom." He 
was further fascinated by a gaudy wall-paper of vine-trellises and 
grapes, which adorned the parlour ; and vowed that he would stay 
there for ever. " For ever," was a word often upon Shelley's lips 
in the course of his checquered life; and yet few men have been 
subject to so many sudden changes through the buffetings of for- 
tune from without and the inconstancy of their own purpose, than 
he was. His biographer has no little trouble to trace and note 
with accuracy his perpetual flittings and the names of ffts innumer- 
able tempora'ry residences. A month had not elapsed before Hogg 
left him in order to begin his own law studies at York; and Shel- 
ley abode " alone in the vine-trellised chamber, where he was to 
remain, a bright-eyed, restless fox amidst sour grapes, not, as his 
poetic imagination at first suggested, for ever, but a little while 
longer." 

The records of this first residence in London are meagre, but 
not unimportant. We hear of negotiations and interviews with 
Mr. Timothy Sheiley, all of which proved unavailing. Shelley 
would not recede from the position he had taken up. Nothing 
would induce him to break off his intimacy with Hogg, or to place 
himself under the tutor selected for him by his father. For Paley's, 



SHELLEY. 



35 



4>r as Mr. Shelley called him " PaHey's," Evidences he expressed 
unbounded contempt. The breach between them gradually widened. 
Mr. Shelley at last determined to try the effect of cutting off sup- 
plies ; but his son only hardened his heart, and sustained himself 
vy a proud consciousness of martyrdom. I agree with Shelley's 
(ast and best biographer, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in his condemnation 
of the poet's behavior as a son. Shelley did not treat his father 
with the common consideration due from youth to age ; and the 
only instances of unpardonable bad taste to be found in his cor- 
respondence or (be notes of his conversation, are insulting phrases 
applied to a man who was really more unfortunate than criminal 
in his relations to this changeling from the realms of faery. It is 
not too much to say that his dislike of his father amounted to 
derangement ; and certainly some of his suspicions with regard to 
him were the hallucinations of a heated fancy. How so just and 
gentle a nature was brought into so false a moral situation, whether 
by some sudden break-down of confidence in childhood or by a grad- 
ually increasing mistrust, is an interesting but perhaps insoluble 
problem. We only know that in his jsarly boyhood Shelley loved 
his father so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his 
illness on one occas-fcn, but that, while at Eton, he had already be- 
come possessed by a dark suspicion concerning him. This is 
proved by the episode of Dr. Lind's visit during his fever. Then 
and evSr afterwards he expected monstrous treatment at his hancjs, 
although the elder gentleman was nothing worse than a muddfe- 
headed squire. It has more than once occurred to me that this 
fever may have been a turning point in his history, and. that 
a delusion, engendered by delirium, may have fixed itself upon 
his mind, owing to some imperfection in the process of recovery. 
But the theory is too speculative and unsupported by proof to be 
more than passingly alluded to. 

At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and 
buy food. It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to 
support him : and we know that he paid them frequent visits at 
their school on Clapham Common. It was here that his char- 
acteristic hatred of tyranny displayed itself on two occasions. 
"One day," writes Miss Hellen Shelley, " his ire was greatly ex- 
cited at a black mark hung round one of our throats, as a penalty 
for some small misdemeanour. He expressed great disapprobation, 
more of the system than that one of his sisters- should be so pun* 
ished. Another time he found me, I think, in an iron collar, which 
certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my opinion. It 
was not worn as a punishment, but because I poked; but Bysshe 
declared it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be discon- 
tinued immediately." The acquaintance which he now made with 
one of his sister's school friends was destined to lead to most 
important results.* Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen 
years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white 

# It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, 1811. 



36 SHELLEY. 

complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerfui 
temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house 
in Mount Street, nick-named " Jew " Westbrook, because of his 
appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of com- 
plexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so 
prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly 
twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a mother to her. 
Both of these young ladies, and the "Jew " their father, welcomed 
Shelley with distinguished kindness. Though he was penniless 
for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his 
family's displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune 
and a baronetcy. It was not to be expected that the coffee-house 
people should look upon him with disfavour. 

Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits both at Mrs. Fenning's 
school and at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence 
with her, hoping, as he expressly stated in a letter of a later date, 
by converting her to his theories, to add his sister and her " to 
the list of the good, the disinterested, the free." At first she 
seems to have been horrified* at the opinions he expressed ; but in 
this case at least he did not overrate the powers of eloquence. 
"With all the earnestness of an evangelist, he preached his gospel 
of free thought or atheism, and had the satisfaction of forming his 
young pupil to his views. He does not seem to have felt any seri- 
ous inclination for Harriet ; but in the abseuce of other friends, he 
gladly availed himself of her society. Gradually she became more 
interesting to him, when he heard mysterious accounts of suffering 
at home and tyranny at school. This was enough to rouse in 
Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the 
seeds of love. What Harriet's ill-treatment really was, no one 
has been able to discovery yet she used to affirm that her life at 
this time was so irksome that she contemplated suicide. 

During the summer of 1811, Shelley's movements were more 
than usually erratic, and his mind was in a state of extraordinary 
restlessness. In the month of May, a kind of accommodation was 
come to with his father. He received permission to revisit Field 
Place, and had an allowance made him of 200/. a year. His uncle, 
Captain Pilfold of Cuckfield, was instrumental in effecting this 
partial reconciliation. Shelley spent some time at his uncle's 
country house, oscillating between London, Cuckfield, and Field 
Place, with characteristic rapidity, and paying one flying visit to 
his cousin Grove at Cwm Elan, near Rhayader, in North Wales. 
This visit is worth mention, since he now for the first time saw 
the scenery of waterfalls and mountains. He was, however, too 
much preoccupied to take much interest in nature. He was di- 
vided between his old affection for Miss Grove, his new but some- 
what languid interest in Harriet, and a dearly cherished scheme 
for bringing about a marriage between his sister Elizabeth and his 
friend Hogg. The letters written to Hogg at this period (vol. i. 
PP- 387 — 418), are exceedingly important and interesting, revealing 
as they do the perturbation of his feelings and the almost morbid 






SHELLEY. 



37 



excitement of his mind. But they are unluckily so badly edited, 
whether designedly or by accident, that it would be dangerous to 
draw minute conclusions from them. As they stand, they raise 
injurious suspicions, which can only be set at rest by a proper 
assignment of dates and explanations. 

Meanwhile his destiny was shaping itself with a rapidity that 
plunged him suddenly into decisive and irrevocable action. It is 
of the greatest moment to ascertain precisely what his feelings were 
during this summer with regard to Harriet. Hogg has printed two 
letters in immediate juxtaposition : the first without date, the second 
with the post-mark of Rhayader. Shelley ends the first epistle 
thus: "Your jokes on Harriet Westbrook amuse me: it is a 
common error for people to fancy others in their own situation, but 
if I know anything about love, I am not in love. I have heard 
from the Westbrooks, both of whom I highly esteem." He begins 
the second with these words : " You will perhaps see me before 
you can answer this ; perhaps not ; heaven knows ! I shall cer- 
tainly come to York, but Harriet Westbrook will decide whether 
now or in three weeks. Her father has persecuted her in a most 
horrible way, by endeavoring to compel her to go to school. She 
asked my advice : resistance was the answer, at the same time that 
I essayed to mollify Mr. W. in vain ! And in consequence of my 
advice she has thrown herself upon my protection. I set off for 
London on Monday. How flattering a distinction I — I am think- 
ing of ten million things at once. What have I said ? I de- 
clare, quite ludicrous. I advised her to resist. She wrote to say 
that resistance was useless, but that she would fly with me, and 
threw herself upon my protection. We shall have 200/. a year; 
when we find it run short, we must live, I suppose, upon love ! 
Gratitude and admiration, all demand that I should love her for 
ever. We shall see you at York. I will hear your arguments for 
matrimonialism, by which I am now almost convinced. I can get 
lodgings at York, I suppose. Direct to me at Graham's, 18, Sack- 
ville Street, Piccadilly." From a letter recently published by Mr. 
W. M. Rossetti (the University Magazine, Feb., 1878), we further 
learn that Harriet, having fallen violently in love with her pre- 
ceptor, had avowed her passion and flung herself into his arms. 

It is clear from these documents, first, that Shelley was not 
I deeply in love with Harriet when he eloped with her; secondly, 
that he was not prepared for the step; thirdly, that she induced 
him to take it ; and fourthly, that he took it under a strong impres- 
sion of her having been ill-treated. She had appealed to his most 
powerful passion, the hatred of tyranny. She had excited his ad- 
miration by setting conventions at defiance, and showing her readi- 
ness to be his mistress. Her confidence called forth his gratitude. 
Her choice of him for a protector flattered him : and, moreover, 
she had acted on his advice to carry resistance a outrance. There 
were many good Shelleyan reasons why he should elope with Har- 
riet ; but among them all I do not find that spontaneous and un- 
sophisticated feeling, which is the substance of enduring love. 



38 SHELLEY. 

In the same series of letters, so incoherently jumbled together 
by Hogg's carelessness or caprice, Shelley more than once ex* 
presses the utmost horror of matrimony. Yet we now find him 
upon the verge of contracting marriage with a woman whom he 
did not passionately love, and who had offered herself unreservedly 
to him. It is worth pausing to observe that even Shelley, fearless 
and uncompromising as he was in conduct, could not at this crisis 
practise the principles he so eloquently impressed on others. Yet 
the point of weakness was honourable. It lay in his respect for 
women in general, and in his tender chivalry for the one woman 
who had cast herself upon his generosity.* 

" My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date Aug. 
15, 181 1, from London, whither he had hurried to arrange the 
affairs of his elopement, " is yet undecided ; not with respect to 
me, but to herself. How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you. 
In my leisure moments for thought, which since I wrote have been 
few, I have considered the important point on which you repro- 
bated my hasty decision. The ties of love and honour are doubt- 
less of sufficient strength to bind congenial souls — they are doubt- 
less indissoluble, but by the brutish force of power ; they are deli- 
cate and satisfactory. Yet the arguments of impracticability, and 
what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice which the female 
is called upon to make — these arguments, which you have urged 
hra manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand. Not that 
I suppose it to be likely that I shall directly be called upon to 
evince my attachment to either theory. I am become a perfect 
convert to matrimony, not from temporising, but ixovayour argu- 
ments ; nor, much as I wish to emulate your virtues and liken my- 
self to you, do I regret the prejudices of anti-matrimonialism from 
your example or assertion. No. The one argument, which you 
have urged so often with so much energy ; the sacrifice made by 
the woman, so disproportioned to any which the man can give — 
this alone may exculpate me, were it a fault, from uninquiring sub- 
mission to your superior intellect. 7 ' 

Whether Shelley from his own peculiar point of view was mor- 
ally justified in twice marrying, is a question of casuistry which 
has often haunted me. The reasons he alleged in extenuation of 
his conduct with regard to Harriet, prove the goodness of his heart, 
his openness to argument, and the delicacy of his unselfishness. 
Bnt they do not square with his expressed code of conduct ; nor 
is it easy to understand how, having found it needful to submit to 
custom/for his partner's sake, he should have gone on denouncing 
an institution which he recognized in his own practice. The conclu- 
sion seems to be that, though he despised accepted usage, and 
would fain have fashioned the world afresh to suit his heart's de- 
sire, the instincts of a loyal gentleman and his practical good sense 
were stronger than his theories. 

A letter from Shelley's cousin, Mr. C. H. Grove, gives the de- 

* See Shelley's third letter to Godwin (Hog* ii. p. 63) for another defence ©* his con- 
duct. "We agreed," &c. 






SHELLEY. 39 

tails of Harriet's elopement. " When Bysshe finally came to town 
to elope with Miss Westbrook, he came as usual to Linclbn's Inn 
Fields, and I was his companion on his visits to her, and finally 
accompanied them early one morning— I forget now the month, x>r 
the date, but it might have been September— in a hackney coach 
to the Green Dragon, in Gracechurch Street, where we remained 
all day, till the hour when the mail-coaches start, when they departed 
in the northern mail for York. " From York the young couple 
made their way at once to Edinburgh, where they were married ac- 
cording to the'formalities of the Scotch law. 

Shelley had now committed that greatest ol social crimes in his 
father's eyes— a mesalliance. Supplies and communications were 
at once cut off from the prodigal ; and it appears that Harriet and 
he were mainly dependent upon the generosity of Captain Pilfold 
for subsistence. Even Jew Westbrook, much as he may have re- 
joiced at seeing his daughter wedded to the heir of several, thou- 
sands a year, buttoned up his pockets, either because he thought it 
well to play the part of an injured parent, or because he was not 
certain about Shelley's expectations. He afterwards made the 
Shelleys an allowance of 200/. a year, and early in 1812 Shelley 
says th at he is in receipt of twice that income. Whence we may 
conclude that both fathers before long relented to the extent of 
the sum above mentioned. 

In spite of temporary impecuniosity, the young people lived 
happily enough in excellent lodgings in George Street. Hogg, 
who joined them early in September, has drawn a lively picture of 
their domesticity. Much of the day was spent in reading aloud ; 
for Harriet, who had a fine voice and excellent lungs, was never 
happy unless she was allowed to read and comment on her favour- 
ite authors. Shelley sometimes fell asleep during the performance 
of these rites ; but when he woke refreshed with slumber, he was 
no less ready than at Oxford to support philosophical paradoxes 
with impassioned and persuasive eloquence. He began to teach 
Harriet Latin, set her to work upon the translation of a French 
story by Madame Cottin, and for his own part executed a version 
of one of Buffon's treatises. The sitting-room was full of books. 
It was one of Shelley's peculiarities to buy books wherever he 
went, regardless of their volume or their cost. These he was 
wont to leave behind, when the moment arrived for a sudden depart- 
ure from his temporary abode ; so that, as Hogg remarks, a fine 
library might have been formed from the waifs and strays of his 
collections scattered over the three kingdoms. This quiet course 
of life was diversified by short rambles in the neighbourhood of 
Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's caustic 
humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's 
mind is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this 
period, and that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, 
somewhat too much given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly 
deficient in sensibility, but otherwise a fit and soothing companion 
for the poet. 



4 o SHELLEY. 

They were not, however, content to remain in Edinburgh. Hogg 
was obliged to leave that city, in order to resume his law studies 
at York, and Shelley's programme of life at this period imperatively 
required the society of his chosen comrade. It was therefore de- 
cided that the three friends should settle at York, to remain ; ' for 
ever" in each other's company. They started in a post-chaise, 
the good Harriet reading aloud novels by the now forgotten Hol- 
croft with untiring energy to charm the tedium of the journey. At 
York more than one cloud obscured their triune felicity. In the 
first place they were unfortunate in their choice of lodgings. In 
the second Shelley 'found himself obliged to take an expensive 
journey to London, in the fruitless attempt to come to some terms 
with his father's lawyer, Mr. Whitton. Mr. Timothy Shelley was 
anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, 
which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. 
He suggested numerous arrangements ; and not long after the 
date of Shelley's residence in York, he proposed to make him an 
immediate allowance of 2000/., if Shelley would but consent to en- 
tail the land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. 
Shelley recognised the truth that property is a trust far more than 
a possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command 
over labour, such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, 
for an unborn being of whose opinions he knew nothing. This is 
only one among many instances of his readiness to sacrifice ease 
comfort, nay, the bare necessities of life, for principle. 

On his return to York, JShelley found a new inmate established 
in their lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth 
doomed to guide his destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had ar- 
rived from London. Harriet believed her sister to be a paragon of 
beauty, good sense, and propriety. She obeyed her elder sister 
like a mother ; never questioned her wisdom ; and foolishly allowed 
her to interpose between herself and her husband. Hogg had 
been told before her first appearance in the friendly circle that 
Eliza was " beautiful, exquisitely beautiful ; an elegant figure, full 
of grace ; her face was lovely, — dark, bright eyes ; jet-black hair, 
glossy; a crop upon which she bestowed the care it merited, — 
almost all her time ; and she was so sensible, so amiable, so good ! " 
Now let us listen to the account he has himself transmitted of this 
woman, whom certainly he did not love, and to whom poor Shelley 
had afterwards but little reason to feel gratitude. " She was older 
than I had expected, and she looked much older than she was. 
The lovely face was seamed with the small-pox, and of a dead white, 
as faces so much marked and scarred commonly are ; as white in- 
deed as a mass of boiled rice, but of a dingy hue, like rice boiled 
in dirty water. The eyes were dark, but dull, and without mean- 
ing; the hair was black and glossy, but coarse ; and there was the 
admired crop — a long crop, much like the tail of a horse — a switch 
tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and constrained. The 
beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, in their ut- 
most perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial young 



SHELLEY. 41 

sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called ' Jew 
Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed 
daughters of Judah." 

This portrait is drawn, no doubt, wjfh an unfriendly hand ; and, 
in Hogg's biography, each of its sarcastic touches is sustained with 
merciless reiteration, whenever the mention of Eliza's name is ne- 
cessary. We hear, moreover, how she taught the blooming Harriet 
to fancy that she was the victim of her nerves, how she checked 
her favourite studies, and how she ruled the household by continual 
reference to a Mrs. Grundy of her earlier experience. " What 
would Miss Warne say ? " was as often on her lips, if we may credit 
Hogg, as the brush and comb were in her hands. 

This intrusion of Eliza disturbed the harmony of Shelley's circle; 
but it is possible that there were deeper reasons for the abrupt de- 
parture which he made from York with his wife and her sister in 
November, 1811. One of his biographers asserts with categorical 
precision that Shelley had good cause to resent Hogg's undue 
familiarity with Harriet, and refers to a curious composition, pub- 
lished by Hogg as a continuation of Goethe's Werther, but believed 
by Mr. Mc Carthy to have beet a letter from the poet to his friend, 
in confirmation of his opinion.* However this may be, the pre- 
cipitation with which the Shelleys quitted York, scarcely giving 
Hogg notice of their resolution, is insufficiently accounted for in his 
biography. 

The destination of the travellers was Keswick. Here they en- 
aged lodgings for a time, and then moved into a furnished house. 
Probably Shelley was attracted to the lake country as much by the 
celebrated men who lived there, as by the beauty of its scenery, 
and the cheapness of its accommodation. He had long entertained 
an admiration for Southey's poetry, and was now beginning to, 
study Wordsworth and Coleridge. But if he hoped for much com- 
panionship with the literary lions of the lakes, he was disappointed. 
Coleridge was absent, and missed making his acquaintance — a cir- 
cumstance he afterwards regretted, saying that he could have been 
more useful to the young poet and metaphysician than Southey. 
DeQuincey, though he writes ambiguously upon this point, does 
not seem to have met Shelley. Wordsworth paid him no attention ; 
and though he saw a good deal of Southey, this intimacy changed 
Shelley's early liking for the man and poet into absolute contempt. 
It was not likely that the cold methodical student, the mechanical 
versifier, and the political turncoat, who had outlived all his earlier 
illusions, should retain the good-will of such an Ariel as Shelley, 
in whose brain Queen Mab was already simmering. Life at Kes- 
wick began to be monotonous. It was, however, enlivened by a 
visit to the Duke of Norfolk's seat, Greys toke. Shelley spent his 
last guinea on the trip ; but though the- ladies of his family enjoyed 
the honour of some days passed in ducal hospitalities, the visit 
was not fruitful of results. The Duke at this time kindly did his 

* McCarthy's Shelley's Early Life, p. 127. 



42 



SHELLEY. 



best, but without success, to bring about a reconciliation between 
his old friend, the member for Horsham, and his rebellious son. 

Another important incident of the Keswick residence was 
Shelley's letter to William Godwin, w T hose work on Political Justice 
he had studied with unbounded admiration. He never spoke of 
this book without respect in after-life, affirming that the perusal 
of it had turned his attention from romances to questions of public 
utility. The earliest letter dated to Godwin from Keswick, January 
3, 1812, is in many respects remarkable, and not the least so as a 
specimen of self-delineation. He entreats Godwin to become his 
guide, philosopher, and friend, urging that " if desire for universal 
happiness has any claim upon your preference/' if persecution and 
injustice suffered in the cause of philanthropy and truth may com- 
mend a young man to William Godwin's regard, he is not unworthy 
of this honour. We who have learned to know the flawless purity 
of Shelley's aspirations, can refrain from smiling at the big generali- 
ties of this epistle. Words which to men made callous by long 
contact with the world, ring false and wake suspicion, were for 
Shelley but the natural expression of his most abiding mood. Yet 
Godwin may be pardoned if he wished to know more in detail of 
the youth, who sought to cast himself upon his care in all the 
panoply of phrases about philanthropy and universal happiness. 
Shelley's second letter contains an extraordinary mixture of truth 
willingly communicated, and of curious romance, illustrating his 
tendency to colour facts with the hallucinations of an ardent fancy. 
Of his sincerity there is, I think, no doubt. He really meant what 
he wrote ; and yet we have no reason to believe the statement 
that he was twice expelled from Eton for disseminating the 
doctrines of Political Justice, or that his father wished to drive 
him by poverty to accept a commission in some distant regiment, 
in order that he might prosecute the Necessity of Atheism in his 
absence, procure a sentence of outlawry, and so convey the family 
estates to his younger brother. The embroidery of bare fact with 
a tissue of imagination was a peculiarity of Shelley's mind ; and 
this letter may be used as a key for the explanation of many strange 
occurrences in his biography. What he tells Godwin about his 
want of love for his father, and his inability to learn from the tutors 
imposed upon him at Eaton and Oxford, represents the simple 
truth. Only from teachers chosen by himself, and recognized as 
his superiors by his own deliberate judgment, can he receive 
instruction. To Godwin he resigns himself with the implicit 
confidence of admiration. Godwin was greatly struck with this 
letter. Indeed, he must have been " or God or beast," like the 
insensible man in Aristotle s Ethics, if he could have resisted the 
devotion of so splendid and high-spirited a nature, poured forth 
in language at once so vehement and so convincingly sincere. He 
accepted the responsible post of Shelley's Mentor ; and thus began 
a connexion which proved not only a source of moral support and 
intellectual guidance to the poet, but it was also destined to end in 
a closer personal tie between the two illustrious men. 



SHELLEY. 43 

In his second letter Shelley told Godwin that he was then 
engaged in writing " An inquiry into the causes ot the failure of 
the French Revolution to benefit mankind," adding, " My plan is 
that of resolving to lose no opportunity to disseminate truth and 
happiness. " Godwin sensibly replied that Shelley was too young to 
set himself up as a teacher and apostle: but his pupil did not take 
the hint. A third letter (Jan, 16, 1812) contains this startling an- 
nouncement : "Ina few days we set off to Dublin. I do not know 
exactly where, but a letter addressed to Keswick will find me. 
Our journey has been settled some time. We go principally to 
forward as 77inch as we can the Catholic Emancipation." In a 
fourth letter (Jan. 28, 181 2) he informs Godwin that he has already 
prepared an address to the Catholics of Ireland, and combats the 
dissuasions of his counsellor with ingenious arguments to prove 
that his contemplated expedition can do no harm, and may be 
fruitful of great good. 

It appears that for some time past Shelley had devoted his 
attention to Irish politics. The persecution of Mr. Peter Finnerty, 
an Irish journalist and editor of The Press newspaper, who had 
been sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Lincoln jail 
(between Feb. 7, 1811, and Aug. 7, 1812) for plain speech about 
Lord Castlereagh, roused his hottest indignation. He published a 
poem, as yet unrecovered, for his benefit ; the proceeds of the sale 
amounting, it is said, to nearly one hundred pounds.* The young 
enthusiast, who was attempting a philosophic study of the French 
Revolution, whose heart was glowing with universal philanthropy, 
and who burned to disseminate truth and happiness, judges that 
Ireland would be a fitting field for making a first experiment in 
practical politics. Armed with the MS. of his Address to the Irish 
People.^ he set sail with Harriet and Eliza on the 3rd of February 
from Whitehaven. They touched the Isle of Man; and after a 
very stormy passage, which drove them to the north coast of Ireland, 
and forced them to conplete their journey by land, the party reached 
Dublin travel-worn, but with unabated spirit, on the 12th. Harriet 
shared her husband's philanthropical enthusiasm. " My wife," 
wrote Shelley to Godwin, "is the partner of my thoughts and feel- 
ings." Indeed, there is abundant proof in both his letters and hers, 
about this period, that they felt and worked together. Miss West- 
brook, meantime, ruled the household ; " Eliza keeps our common 
stock of money for safety in some nook or corner of her dress, but 
we are not dependent on her, although she gives it out as we want 
it." This master-touch of unconscious delineation tells us all we 
need to know about the domestic party now established in 7, Lower 
Sackville Street. Before a week had passed, the Address to 
the Irish People had been printed. Shelley and Harriet immedi- 
ately engaged their whole energies in the task of distribution. 
It was advertised for sale ; but that alone seemed insufficient. On 
the 27th of February Shelley wrote to a friend in England : " 1 

* McCarthy, p. 255. 

t It was published in Dublin. See reprint in McCarthy, p. 179. 



44 



SHELLEY. 



have already sent 400 of my Irish pamphlets into the world, and 
they have excited a sensation of wonder in Dublin. Eleven hun- 
dred yet remain for distribution. Copies have been sent to sixty 
public-houses. . . . Expectation is on the tiptoe. I send a man out 
every day to distribute copies, with instructions where and how to 
give them. His account corresponds with the multitudes of peo- 
ple who possess them. I stand at the balcony of our window and 
watch till I see a man who looks likely. I throw a book to him." 

A postscript to this letter lets us see the propaganda from 
Harriet's point of view. " I am sure you would laugh were you to 
see us give the pamphlets. We throw them out of window, and 
give them to men that we pass in the streets. For myself, I am 
ready to die of laughter when it is done, and Percy looks so grave. 
Yesterday he put one into a woman's hood of a cloak." 

The purpose of this address was to rouse the Irish people to a 
sense of their real misery, to point out that Catholic Emancipation 
and a Repeal of the Union Act were the only radical remedies for 
their wrongs, and to teach them the spirit in which they should at- 
tempt a revolution. On the last point Shelley felt intensely. The 
whole address aims at the inculcation of a noble moral temper, 
tolerant, peaceful, resolute, rational, and self-denying. Considered 
as a treatise on the principles which should govern patriots during 
a great national crisis, the document is admirable : and if the in- 
habitants of Dublin had been a population of Shelleys, its effects 
might have been permanent and overwhelming. The mistake lay 
in supposing that a people whom the poet himself described as " of 
scarcely greater elevation in the scale of intellectual being than the 
oyster," were qualified to take the remedy of their grievances into 
their own hands, or were amenable to such sound reasoning as he 
poured forth. He told Godwin that he had " wilfully vulgarised 
the language of this pamphlet, in order to reduce the remarks it 
contains to the taste and comprehension of the Irish peasantry." 
A few extracts will enable the reader to judge how far he had suc- 
ceeded in this aim. I select such as seem to me most valuable for 
the light they throw upon his own opinions. " All religions are 
good which makeMnen good ; and the way that a person ought to 
prove that his method of worshipping God is best, is for himself to 
be better than all other men." " A Protestant is my brother, and a 
Catholic is my brother." " Do not inquire if a man be a heretic, if 
he be' a Quaker, a Jew, or a heathen ; but if he be a virtuous man, 
if he loves liberty and truth, if he wish the happiness and peace of 
human kind. If a man be ever so much a believer and love not 
these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a rascal, and a knave." 
" It is not a merit to tolerate, but it is a crime to be intolerant." 
" Anything short of unlimited toleration and complete charity with 
all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ principally in- 

isted, is wrong." " Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient Think 

and talk and discuss Be free and be happy, but first be wise 

and good." Proceeding to recommend the formation of associations, 
he condemns secret and violent societies ; " Be fair, open, and you 



SHELLEY. 



45 



will be terrible to your enemies. " " Habits of Sobriety, Regu- 
larity, and Thought must be entered into and firmly resolved 
upon." Then follow precepts, which Shelley no doubt regarded 
as practical, for the purification of private morals, and the regulation 
of public discussion by the masses whom he elsewhere recognised 
as u thousands huddled together, one mass of animated filth. " 

The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an 
inflammatory demagogue ; however visionary may have been the 
hopes he indulged, he based those hopes upon the still more Uto- 
pian foundation of a sudden ethicial reform, and preached a revolu- 
tion without bloodshed. We find in them, moreover, the germs of 
The Revolt of Isla?n, where the hero plays the part successfully 
in fiction, which the poet had attempted without appreciable result 
in practice at Dublin. The same principles guided Shelley at a 
still later period. When he wrote his Masque of Anarchy, he 
bade the people of England to assemble by thousands, strong in 
the truth and justice- of their cause, invincible in peaceful opposi- 
tion to force. 

While he was sowing his Address broadcast in the streets of 
Dublin, Shelley was engaged in printing a second pamphlet on the 
subject of Catholic Emancipation. It was entitled Proposals for 
an Association, and advocated in serious and temperate phrase the 
formation of a vast society, binding all the Catholic patriots of Ire- 
land together, for the "recovery of their rights. In estimating 
Shelley's political sagacity, it must be remembered that Catholic 
Emancipation has since his day been brought about by the very 
measure he proposed and under the conditions he foresaw. Speak- 
ing of the English Government in his Address, he used these 
simple phrases: — "It wants altering and mending. It will be 
mended, and a reform of English Government will produce good to 
the Irish." These sentences were prophetic ; and perhaps they 
are destined to be even more so. 

With a view to presenting at one glance Shelley's position as a 
practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and 
compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under 
the title of A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout 
the Kingdom. He saw that the House of Commons did not rep- 
resent the country ; and acting upon his principle that government 
is the servant of the governed, he sought means for ascertaining 
the real will of the nation with regard to its Parliament, and for 
bringing the collective opinion of the population to bear upon its 
rulers. The plan proposed was that a huge network of committees 
should be formed, and that by their means every individual man 
should be canvassed. We find here the same method of advancing 
reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland. How moderate 
were his own opinions with regard to the franchise, is proved by 
the following sentence ; — u With respect to Universal Suffrage, I 
confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of 
public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think 
that none but those who register their names as paying a certain 



4 6 SHELLEY. 

small sum in direct taxes ought at present to send members to 
Parliament." As in the case of Ireland, so in that of England, 
subsequent events have shown that Shelley's hopes were not ex* 
aggerated. 

While the Shelleys were in Dublin, a ^meeting of the Irish 
Catholics was announced for the evening of Feb. 28. It was held 
in Fishamble Street Theatre ; and here Shelley made his debut as 
an orator. He spoke for about an hour ; and his speech was, on 
the whole, well received, though it raised some hisses at the begin- 
ning by his remarks upon Roman Catholicism. There is no proof 
that Shelley, though eloquent in conversation, was a powerful 
public speaker. The somewhat conflicting accounts we have re- 
ceived of this his maiden effort,tend to the impression that he failed 
to carry his audience with him. The dissemination of his pamphlets 
had, however, raised considerable interest in his favour ; and he 
was welcomed by the press as an Englishman of birth and fortune, 
who wished well to the Irish cause. His youth told somewhat 
against him. It was difficult to take the strong words of the beard- 
less boy at their real value ; and as though to aggravate this draw- 
back, his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, an efficient agent in the dis- 
semination of the Address, affirmed that his master was fifteen — 
four years less than his real age. 

In Dublin Shelley, made acquaintance with Curran, whose jokes 
and dirty stories he could not appreciate, and with a Mr. Lawless, 
who began a history of the Irish people in concert with the young 
philosopher. We also obtain, from one of Harriet's letters, a some- 
what humorous peep at another of their friends, a patriotic Mrs. 
Nugent, who supported herself by working in a furrier's shop, and 
who is described as " sitting in the room now, and talking to Percy 
about Virtue." After less than two months' experience of his Irish 
propaganda, Shelley came to the conclusion that he "had done all 
that he could." The population of Dublin had not risen to the 
appeal of their Laon with the rapidity he hoped for : and accordingly 
upon the 7th of April he once more embarked with his family for 
Holyhead. In after-days he used to hint that the police had given 
him warning that it would be well for him to leave Dublin ; but, 
though the danger of a prosecution was not wholly visionary, this 
intimation does not seem to have been made. Before he quitted 
Ireland, however, he despatched a box containing the remaining, 
copies of his Address and Proposals, together with the recently 
printed edition of another manifesto, called a Declaration of Rights 
to a friend in Sussex. This box was delayed at the Holyhead 
custom-house, and opened. Its contents gave serious anxietv to 
the Surveyor of Customs, who communicated the astonishing dis- 
covery through the proper official channels to the government. 
After some correspondence, the authorities decided to take no steps 
against Shelley, and the box was forwarded. to its destination. 

The friend in question was a Miss Eliza Hitchener, of Hurst- 
pierpoint, who kept a sort of school, and who had attracted Shelley's 
favourable notice by her advanced political and religious opinions. 



SHELLEY. 



47 



He does not seem to have made her personal acquaintance ; but 
some of his most interesting letters from Ireland are addressed to 
her. How recklessly he entered into serious entanglements with 
people whom he had not learned to know, may be gathered from 
these extracts : — " We will meet you in Wales, and never part 
again. It will not do. In compliance with Harriet's earnest so- 
licitations, I entreated you instantly to come and join our circle, 
resign your school, all, everything for us and the Irish cause." 
" I ought to count myself a favoured mortal with such a wife and 
such a friend." Harriet addressed this lady as " Portia;" and it 
is an undoubted fact that soon after their return to England, Miss 
Hitchener formed one of their permanent family circle. Her en- 
trance into -it and her exit from it at no very distant period are, 
however, both obscure. Before long she acquired another name 
than Portia in the Shelley household, and now she is better known 
to fame as the u Brown Demon." Eliza Westbrook took a strong 
dislike to her ; Harriet followed suit ; and Shelley himself found 
that he had liked her better at a distance than in close companion- 
ship. She had at last to be bought off or bribed to leave. 

The scene now shifts with bewildering frequency ; nor is it easy 
to trace the Shelleys in their rapid flight. About the 21st of April, 
they settled for a short time at Nantgwilt, near Rhayader, in North 
Wales. Ere long we find them at Lynmouth, on the Somersetshire 
coast. Here Shelley continued his political propaganda, by circu- 
lating the Declaration of Rights, whereof mention has already 
been made. It was, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti first pointed out, a 
manifesto concerning the ends of government and the rights of man 
— framed in imitation of two similar French Revolutionary doc* 
uments, issued by the Constituent Assembly in August, 1789, and 
by Robespierre in April, 1793.* Shelley used to seal this pamphlet 
in bottles and set it afloat upon the sea, hoping perhaps that after 
this wise it would traverse St. George's Channel and reach the 
sacred soil of Erin. He also employed his servant, Daniel Hill, to 
distribute it among the Somersetshire farmers. On the 19th of 
August this man was arrested in the streets of Barnstaple, and 
sentenced to six months' imprisonment for uttering a seditious 
pamphlet ; and the remaining copies of the Declaration of Rights 
were destroyed. In strong contrast with the puerility of these pro- 
ceedings, is the grave and lofty Letter to Lord Ellenborough, com- 
posed at Lynmouth, and printed at Barnstable.* A printer, named 
D. J. Eaton, had recently been sentenced to imprisonment by his 
Lordship for publishing the Third Part of Paine's Age of Reason. 
Shelley's epistle is an eloquent argument in favour of toleration and 
the freedom of the intellect, carrying the matter beyond the instance 
of legal tyranny which occasioned its composition, and treating it 
with philosophic, if impassioned seriousness. 

An extract from this composition will serve to show his power 
of handling weighty English prose, while yet a youth of hardly 

* Reprinted in McCarthy, p. 324. 

t Reprinted in Lady Shelley's Memorials, p. 29. 



4 8 SHELLEY. 

twenty. I have chosen a passage bearing on his theological opin- 
ions : — 

Moral qualities are such as only a human being can possess. To 
attribute them to the Spirit of the Universe, or to suppose that it is capa- 
ble of altering them, is to degrade God into man, and to annex to this 
incomprehensible Being qualities incompatible with any possible defini- 
tion of his nature. 

It may be here objected : Ought not the Creator to possess the 
perfections of the creature ? No. To attribute to God the moral qualities 
of man, is to suppose him susceptible of passions, which, arising out of cor- 
poreal organization, it is plain that a pure spirit cannot possess. . . . But 
even suppose, with the vulgar, that God is a venerable old man, seated on 
a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions, analogous 
to those of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an 
earthly king ; still, goodness and justice are qualities seldom nominally 
denied him, and it will be admitted that he disapproves of any action 
incompatible with those qualities. Persecution for opinion is unjust. With 
what consistency, then, can the worshippers of a Deity whose benevolence 
they boast, embitter the existence of their fellow-being, because his ideas 
of that deity are different from those which they entertain ? Alas ! there 
is no consistency in those persecutors who worship a benevolent Deity; 
those who worship a demon would alone act consonantly to these prin- 
ciples by imprisoning and torturing in his name. 

Shelley had more than once urged Godwin and his family to 
visit him. The sage of Skinner Street thought that now was a con- 
venient season. Accordingly he left London, and travelled by 
coach to Lynmouth, where he found that the Shelleys had flitted a 
few days previously without giving any notice. This fruitless 
journey of the poet's Mentor is humorously described by Hogg, as 
well as the one undertaken by himself in the following year to 
Dublin with a similar result. The Shelleys were now established 
at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales, on an estate belong- 
ing to Mr. W. A. Madocks, M.P. for Boston. This gentleman had 
reclaimed a considerable extent of marshy ground from the sea, 
and protected it with an embankment. Shelley whose interest in 
the poor people around him was always keen and practical, lost no 
time in making their acquaintance at Tremadoc. The work of 
utility carried out by his landlord aroused his enthusiastic admira- 
tion ; and when the embankment was emperilled by a heavy sea, 
he got up a subscription for its preservation. Heading the list 
with 500/., how raised, or whether paid, we know not, he endeav- 
oured to extract similar sums from the neighbouring gentry, and 
even ran up with Harriet to London to use his influence for the same 
purpose with the Duke of Norfolk. On this occasion he made the 
personal acquaintance of the Godwin family. 

Life at Tanyrallt was smooth and studious, except for the 
diversion caused by the peril to the embankment. We hear of 
Harriet continuing her Latin studies, reading Odes of Horace, and 
projecting an epistle in that language to Hogg. Shelley, as usual, 
collected many books around him. There are letters extant in which 



SHELLEY. 49 

he writes to London for Spinoza and Kant, Plato, and the works of 
the chief Greek historians. It appears that at this period, under the 
influence of Godwin, he attempted to conquer a strong national dislike 
for history. " I am determined to apply myself to a study which is 
hateful and disgusting to my very soul, but which is above all studies 
necessary for him who would be listened to as a mender of anti- 
quated abuses, — I mean, that record of crimes and miseries — his- 
tory." Although he may have made an effort to apply himself to his- 
torical reading, he was not successful. His true bias inclined him 
to metaphysics coloured by a glowing fancy, and to poetry penetrated 
with speculative enthusiasm. In the historic sense he was defici- 
ent ; and when he made a serious effort at a later period to com- 
pose a tragedy upon the death of Charles I., this work was taken 
up with effort, and finally abandoned. 

In the same letters he speaks about a collection of short poems 
on which he was engaged, and makes frequent allusions to Queen 
Mab. It appears from his own assertion, and from Medwin's biog- 
raphy, that a poem on Queen Mab had been projected and partially 
written by him at the early age of eighteen. But it was not taken 
seriously in hand until the spring of 1812; nor was it finished and 
printed before 1813. The first impression was a private issue of 250 
copies, on fine paper, which Shelley distributed to people whom he 
wished to influence. It was pirated soon after its appearance, and 
again in 1821 it was given to the public by a bookseller named 
Clarke. Against the latter republication Shelley energetically pro- 
tested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to The Examiner, from 
Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production which he had not 
even seen for several years. " I doubt not but that it is perfectly 
worthless in point of literary composition ; and that in all that con- 
cerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler dis- 
criminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more 
crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, 
and domestic oppression ; and I regret this publication, not so much 
from literary vanity as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than 
to serve the sacred cause of freedom.'' This judgment is un- 
doubtedly severe ; but, though exaggerated in its condemnation, it, 
like all Shelley's criticisms on his own works, expresses the truth. 
We cannot include Queen Mab, in spite of its sonorous rhetoric 
and fervid declamation, in the canon of his masterpieces. It had a 
succJs de scandale on its first appearance, and fatally injured 
Shelley's reputation. As a work of art it lacks maturity and per- 
manent vitality. 

The Shelleys were suddenly driven away from Tanyrallt by a 
mysterious occurrence, of which no satisfactory explanation has yet 
been given. According to letters written by himself and Harriet 
soon after the event, and confirmed by the testimony of Eliza, 
Shelley was twice attacked upon the night of Feb. 24 by an armed 
ruffian, with whom he struggled in a hand-to-hand combat. Pistols 
were fired and windows broken, and Shelley's nightgown was shot 
through : but the assassin made his escape'from the house without 



5° 



SHELLEY. 



being recognised. His motive and his personality still remain 
matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of 
Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum 
taken to assuage intense physical pain ; whether it was a perilous 
hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill ; or whether, 
as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly 
neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, 
blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of no un- 
frequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the rel- 
ative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne in 
mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in 
the parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his 
pistols on the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have 
seen the villain ; and, on the other, that the details furnished by 
Harriet, and confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a 
witness as Eliza, are too circumstantial to be lightly set aside. 

On the whole it appears most probable that Shelley on this night 
was the subject of a powerful hallucination. The theory of his 
enemies at Tanyrallt, that the story had been invented to facilitate 
his escape from the neighbourhood without paying his bills, maybe 
dismissed. But no investigation on the spot could throw any clear 
light on the circumstance, and Shelley's friends, Hogg, Peacock, 
and Mr. Madocks, concurred in regarding the affair as a delusion. 
There was no money in the common purse of the Shelleys at 
this moment. In their distress they applied to Mr. T. Hookham, 
a London publisher, who sent them enough to carry them across 
the Irish Channel. After a short residence in 35, Cuffe Street, 
Dublin, and a flying visit to Killarney, they returned to London. 
Eliza, for some reason as unexplained as the whole episode of this 
second visit to Ireland, was left behind for a short season. The 
flight from Tanyrallt closes the first important period of Shelley's 
life ; and his settlement in London marks the beginning of another, 
fruitful of the gravest consequences and decisive of his future. 



SHELLEY. $\ 



CHAPTER IV. 

SECOND RESIDENCE IN LONDON, AND SEPARATION FROM HARRIET. 

Early in May the Shelleys arrived in London, where they 
were soon joined by Eliza, from whose increasingly irksome com- 
panionship the poet had recently enjoyed a few weeks' respite. 
After living for a short while in hotels, they took lodgings in Half 
Moon Street. The house had a projecting window, where the 
poet loved to sit with book in hand, and catch, according to his 
custom, the maximum of sunlight granted by a chary English sum- 
mer. " He wanted," said one of his female admirers, "only a pan 
of clear water and a fresh turf to look like some young lady's lark, 
hanging outside for air and song." According to Hogg, this 
period of London life was a pleasant and tranquil episode in Shel- 
ley's troubled career. His room was full of books, among which 
works of German metaphysics occupied a prominent place, though 
they were not deeply studied. He was now learning Italian, and 
made his first acquaintance with Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch. 

The habits of the household were, to say the least, irregular ; 
for Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was 
an indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them 
less by forethought than by the operation of divine chance ; and 
when there was no meat provided for the entertainment of casual 
guests, the table was supplied with buns, procured by Shelley from 
the nearest pastry-cook. He had already abjured animal food and 
alcohol ; and his favorite diet consisted of pulse or bread, which he 
ate dry with water, or made into panada. Hogg relates how, when 
he was walking in the streets and felt hungry, he would dive into 
a baker's shop and emerge with a loaf tucked under his arm. This 
he consumed as he went along, very often reading at the same 
time, and dodging the foot-passengers with the rapidity of move- 
ment which distinguished him. He could not comprehend how 
any man should want more than bread. " I have dropped a word 
a hint," says Hogg, " about a pudding ; a pudding, Bysshe said 
dogmatically, is a prejudice." This indifference to diet was highly 
characteristic of Shelley, During the last years of his life, even 
when he was suffering from the frequent attacks of a painful dis- 
order, he took no heed of food ; and his friend, Trelawny, attributes 
the derangement of his health, in a great measure, to this careless* 



S2 



SHELLEY. 



ness. Mrs. Shelley used to send him something to eat into the 
room where he habitually studied ; but the plate frequently remained 
untouched for hours upon a bookshelf, and at the end of the day he 
might be heard asking, " Mary, have I dined ? " His dress was 
no less simple than his diet. Hogg says that he never saw him in 
a great coat, and that his collar was unbuttoned to let the air play 
freely on his throat. " In the street or road he reluctantly wore a 
hat ; but in fields and gardens, his little round head had no other 
covering than his long, wild, ragged locks " Shelley's head, as is 
well known, was remarkably small and round ; he used to plunge 
it several times a day in cold water, and expose it recklessly to the 
intensest heat of fire or sun. Mrs. Shelley relates that a great part 
of the Cenci was written on their house-roof near Leghorn, where 
Shelley lay exposed to the unmitigated ardour of Italian summer 
heat ; and Hogg describes him reading Homer by a blazing fire- 
light, or roasting his skull upon the hearth-rug by the hour. 

These personal details cannot be omitted by the biographer of 
such a man as Shelley. He was an elemental and primeval crea- 
ture, as little subject to the laws of custom in his habits as in his 
modes of thought, living literally as the spirit moved him, with a 
natural nonchalance that has perhaps been never surpassed. To 
time and place he was equally indifferent, and could not be got to 
remember his engagements. " He took strange caprices, unfounded 
frights and dislikes, vain apprehensions and panic terrors, and 
therefore he absented himself from formal and sacred engagements. 
He was unconscious and oblivious of times, places, persons, and 
seasons; and falling into some poetic vision, some day-dream, he 
quickly and completely forgot all that he had repeatedly and sol- 
emnly promised ; or he ran away after some object of imaginary 
urgencv and importance, which suddenly came into his head, set* 
ting off in vain pursuit of it, he knew not whither. When he was 
caught, brought up in custody, and turned over to the ladies, with, 
Behold, your King ! to be caressed, courted, admired, and flattered, 
the king of beautv and fancy would too commonly bolt ; slip away, 
steal out, creep off; unobserved and almost magically he vanished; 
thus mvsteriously depriving his fair subjects of his much-coveted, 
long lobked-for company." If he had been fairly caged and found 
himself in congenial company, he let time pass unheeded, sitting 
up all night to "talk, and chaining his audience by the spell of his 
unrivalled eloquence ; for wonderful as was his poetry, those who 
enjoved the privilege of converse with him, judge it even more 
attractive. " He was commonly most communicative, unreserved, 
and eloquent, and enthusiastic, when those around him were in- 
clining to yield to the influence of sleep, or rather at the hour when 
they would hav'e been disposed to seek their chambers, but for the 
bewitching charms of his discourse." 

From Half Moon Street the Shelleys moved into a house in 
Pimlico ; and it was here, according to Hogg, or at Cooke's Hotel 
in Dover Street according to other accounts, that Shelley's first 
child Ianthe Eliza, was born about the end of June, 1813. Harriet 



■ 



SHELLEY. 

did not take much to her little girl, and gave her over to a wet- 
nurse, for whom Shelley conceived a great dislike. That a mother 
should not nurse her own baby was no doubt contrary to his prin- 
ciples ; and the double presence of the servant and Eliza, whom he 
now most cordially detested, made his home uncomfortable. We 
have it on excellent authority, that of Mr. Peacock, that he " was ex- 
tremely fond of it (the child), and would walk up and down a room 
with it in his arms for a long time together, singing to it a song of 
his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his own 
coining. His song was Yahmani, Ydhmahi, Yahmani, Yahmani." 
'To the want of sympathy between the father and the mother in this 
matter of Ianthe, Mr. Peacock is inclined to attribute the beginning 
of troubles in the Shelley household. There is, indeed, no doubt 
that the revelation of Harriet's maternal coldness must have been 
extremely painful to her husband ; and how far she carried her 
insensibility, may be gathered from a story told by Hogg about 
her conduct during an operation performed upon the child. 

During this period of his sojourn in London, Shelley was again 
in some pecuniary difficulties. Yet he indulged Harriet's vanity 
by setting up in a carriage, in which they afterwards took a hurried 
journey to Edinburgh and back. He narrowly escaped a debtor's 
prison through this act of extravagance, and by a somewhat ludi- 
crous mistake Hogg was arrested for the debt due to the coach- 
maker. His acquaintances were few and scattered, and he saw 
nothing of his family. Gradually, however, he seems to have be- 
come a kind of prophet in a coterie of learned ladies. The views 
he had propounded in Queen Mab, his passionate belief in the 
perfectibility of man, his vegetarian doctrines, and his readiness to 
adopt any new nostrum for the amelioration of the race, endeared 
him to all manners of strange people ; nor was he deterred by 
aristocratic prejudices from frequenting society which proved ex- 
tremely uncongenial to Hogg, and of which we have accordingly 
some caustic sketches from his pen. His chief friends were a 
Mrs. Boinville, for whom he conceived an enthusiasic admiration, 
and her daughter Cornelia, married to a vegetarian, Mr. Newton. 
In order to be near them he had moved to Pimlico ; and his next 
move, from London to a cottage named High Elms, at Bracknell, 
in Berkshire, had the same' object. With Godwin and his family 
he was also on terms of familiar intercourse. Under the philoso- 
pher's roof in Skinner Street there was now gathered a group of 
miscellaneous inmates — Fanny Imlay, the daughter of his first 
wife, Mary Wollstonecraft ; Mary, his own daughter by the same 
marriage ; his second wife, and her two children, Claire and 
Charles Clairmont, the offspring of a previous union. From this 
connexion with the Godwin household events of the greatest im- 
portance in the future were destined to arise, and already it appears 
that Fanny Imlay had begun to look with perilous approval on the 
fascinating poet. Hogg and Mr. Peacock, the well-known novelist, 
described by Mrs. Newton as "a cold scholar, who, I think, has 
neither taste nor feeling," were his only intimates. 



54 



SHELLEY. 



Mrs. Newton's unfair judgment of Mr. Peacock marks a discord 
between the two chief elements of Shelley's present society ; and 
indeed it will appear to a careful student of his biography that 
Hogg, Peacock, and Harriet, now stood somewhat by themselves 
and aloof from the inner circle of his associates. If we regard the 
Shelleys as the centre of an extended line, we shall find the West- 
brook family at one end, the Boinville family at the other, with 
Hogg and Peacock somewhere in the middle. Harriet was natu- 
rally drawn to the Westbrook extremity, and Shelley to the Boin. 
ville. Peacock had no affinity for either, but a sincere regard for. 
Harriet as well as for her husband; while Hogg was in much the 
same position, except that he had made friends with Mrs. Newton. 
The Godwins, of great importance to Shelley himself, exercised 
their influence at a distance from the rest Frequent change 
from Bracknell to London and back again, varied by the flying 
journey to Edinburgh, and a last visit paid in strictest secrecy to 
his mother and sisters, at Field Place, of which a very interesting 
record is left in the narrative of Mr. Kennedy, occupied the interval 
between July, 1813, and March, 1814. The period was not pro- 
ductive of literary masterpieces. We only hear of a Refutation 
of Deism, a dialogue between Eusebes and Theosophus, which 
attacked all forms of Theistic belief. 

Since we are now approaching the greatest crisis in Shelley's 
life, it behoves us to be more than usualy careful in considering his 
circumstances, at this epoch. His homehad become cold and dull. 
Harriet did not love her child, and spent her time in a great measure 
with her Mount Street relations. Eliza was a sourse of continual 
irritation, and the Westbrook family did its best, by interference 
and suggestion, to refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On 
the other hand he found among the Boinville set exactly that high- 
flown, enthusiastic, sentimental atmosphere which suited his ideal- 
izing temper. Two extracts from a letter written to Hogg upon 
the 1 6th of March, 1814, speak more eloquently than any analysis, 
and will place before the reader the antagonism which had sprung 
up in Shelley's mind between his own home and the circle of his own 

friends: — "I have been staying with Mrs. B for the last 

month ; I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and 
friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself. They 
have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have felt 
myself translated to a paradise, which has nothing of mortality but 
its transitoriness ; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity, 
which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this 
happy home, — for it has become my home. The trees, the bridge, 
the minutest objects, have already a place in my affections." 

" Eliza is still with us— not here! — but will be with me when 
the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but 
little inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all 
my heart and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible 
sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little 
Ianthe, in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy, 




SHELLEY. -,. 

DO 

I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings 
of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she 
is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, that cannot see to 



Kting.' 
W 
istas 



While divided in this way between a home which had become 
istasteful to him and a house where he found scope for his most 
romantic outpourings of sensibility, Shelley fell suddenly and pas- 
sionately in love with Godwin's daughter, Mary. Peacock; who lived 
in close intimacy with him at this period, must deliver his testimony 
as to the overwhelming nature of the new attachment : — " Nothing 
that I ever read in tale or history could present a more striking 
image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion, than 
that under which I found him labouring when, at his request, I went 
up from the country to call on him in London. Between his old feel- 
ings towards Harriet, from whom he was not then separated, and 
his passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his 
speech, the state of a mind * suffering, like a little kingdom, the 
nature of an insurrection.' His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and 
dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum, and said, ' I 
never part from this/ " 

We may therefore affirm, I think, with confidence that in the 
winter and spring of 1814, Shelley had been becoming gradually 
more and more estranged from Harriet, whose commonplace nature 
was no mate for his, and whom he had never loved with all the depth 
of his affection ; that his intimacy with the Boinville family had 
brought into painful prominence whatever was jarring and repug- 
nant'to him in his home ; and that in this crisis of his fate he had 
fallen in love for the first time seriously with Mary Godwin.* She 
was then a girl of sixteen, " fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and 
with a piercing look," to quote Hogg's description of her, as she 
first appeared before him on the 8th or 9th of June, 1814. With 
her freedom from prejudice, her tense and high-wrought sensibility, 
her acute intellect, enthusiasm for ideas, and vivid imagination, 
Mary Godwin was naturally a fitter companion for Shelley than 
the good Harriet, however beautiful. 

That Shelley early in 18 14 had no intention of leaving his wife, 
is probable ; for he was re-married to her on the 24th of March, 
eight days after his impassioned letter to Hogg, in St. George's, 
Hanover Square. Harriet was pregnant, and this ratification of the 
Scotch marriage was no doubt intended to place the legitimacy of a 
possible heir beyond all question. Yet it seems, if we may found 
conjecture on " Stanzas, April, 181 4," that in the very month after 
this new ceremony Shelley found the difficulties of his wedded 
life insuperable, and that he was already making up his mind to 
part from Harriet. About the middle of June the separation act- 
ually occurred — not by mutual consent, so far as any published 
documents throw light upon the matter, but rather by Shelley's 

* The date at which he first made Mary's acquaintance is uncertain. Peacock says thaf 
it was between April 18 and June 8. 



S 6 SHELLEY. 

sudden abandonment of his wife and child.* For a short while 
Harriet was left in ignorance of his abode, and with a very insuffi- 
cient sum of money at her disposal. She placed herself under the 
protection of her father, retired to Bath, and about the beginning of 
July received a letter from Shelley, who was thenceforth solicitous 
for her welfare, keeping up a correspondence with her, supplying 
her with funds, and by no means shrinking from personal communi- 
cations. 

That Shelley must bear the responsibility of this separation 
seems to me quite clear. His justification is to be found in his 
avowed opinions on the subject of love and marriage— opinions 
which Harriet knew well and professed to share, and of which he 
had recently made ample confession in the notes to Queen Mab. 
The world will still agree with Lord Eldon in regarding those opin- 
ions as dangerous to society, and a blot upon the poet's character; 
but it would be unfair, while condemning them as frankly as he 
professed them, to blame him also because he did not conform to 
the opposite code of morals, for which he frequently expressed ex- 
treme abhorrence, and which he stigmatised, however wrongly, as 
the source of the worst social vices. It must be added that the 
Shelley family in their memorials of the poet, and through their 
friend, Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on 
Harriet, that documents are extant which will completely vindicate 
the poet's conduct in the matter. It is therefore but just to await 
their publication before pronouncing a decided judgment. Mean- 
while there remains no doubt about the fact that forty days after 
leaving Harriet, Shelley departed from London with Mary Godwin, 
who had consented to share his fortunes. How he plighted his new 
troth, and won the hand of her who was destined to be his compan- 
ion for life, may best be told in Lady Shelley's words* ! — 

" His anguish, his isolation, his difference from other men, his 
gifts of genius and eloquent enthusiasm, made a deep impression on 
Godwin's daughter Mary, now a girl of sixteen, who had been ac- 
customed to hear Shelley spoken of as something rare and strange. 
To her, as they met one eventful day in St. Pancras Churchyard,'by 
her mother's grave, Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the 
tale of his wild past — how he had suffered, how he had been misled, 
and how, if supported by her love, he hoped in future years to en- 
rol his name with the wise and good who had done battle for their 
fellow-men, and been true through all adverse storms to the cause 
of humanity. Unhesitatingly, she placed her hand in his, and 
linked her fortune with his own j and most truthfully, as the remain- 
ing portions ot these Memorials will prove, was the' pledge of both 
redeemed. The theories in which the daughter of the authors of 
Political Justice, and of the Rights of Woman, had been educated, 
spared her from any conflict between her duty and her affection. 
For she was the child of parents whose writings had had for their 

* Leigh Hunt, Aulob. p. 236, and Medwln, however, both assert that it was by mutual 
consent. The whole question must be studied in Peacock and in Garnett, Rehcs of 
Shelley, p. 147. 



SHELLEY. 



57 



object to prove that marriage was one among the many institutions 
which a new era in the history of mankind was about to sweep away. 
By her father, whom she loved — by the writings of her mother, whom 
she had been taught to venerate — these doctrines had been rendered 
familiar to her mind. It was therefore natural that she should 
listen to the dictates of her own heart, and willingly unite her fate 
with one who was so worthy of her love." 

Soon after her withdrawal to Bath, Harriet gave birth to Shelley's 
second child, Charles Bysshe, who died in 1826. She subsequently 
formed another connexion which proved unhappy ; and on the 10th 
of November, 1816, she commited suicide by drowning herself in 
the Serpentine. The distance of time between June, 1814, and 
November, 181 6, and the 'frew ties formed by Harriet in this interval, 
prove that there was no immediate connexion between Shelley's 
abandonment of his wife and her suicide. She had always enter- 
tained the thought of self-destruction, as Hogg, who is no adverse 
witness in her case, has amply recorded ; and it may be permitted 
• us to suppose that, finding herself for the second time unhappy in 
her love, she reverted to a long-since cherished scheme, and cut 
the knot of life and all its troubles. 

So far as t'.iis is possible, I have attempted to narrate the most 
painful episode in Shelley's life as it occurred, without extenuation 
and without condemnation. Until the papers, mentioned with such 
insistence by LadyShelley and Mr. Garnett, are given to the world, 
it is impossible that the poet should not bear the reproach of heart- 
lessness and inconstancy in this the gravest of all human relations. 
Such, however, is my belief in the essential goodness of his char- 
acter, after allowing, as we must do, for the operation of his peculiar 
principles upon his conduct, that I for my own part am willing to 
suspend my judgment till the time arrives for his vindication. The 
language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnett justify us in ex- 
pecting that that vindication will be as startling as complete. If it 
is not, they, as pleading for him, will have overshot the mark of 
prudence, 

On the 28th of July Shelley left London with Mary Godwin, 
who up to this date had remained beneath her father's roof. There 
was some secrecy in their departure, because they were accom- 
panied by Miss Clairmont, whose mother disapproved of her form- 
ing a third in the party. Having made their way to Dover, they 
crossed the Channel in an open boat, and went at once to Paris. 
Here they hired a donkey for their luggage, intending to perform 
the journey across France on foot. Shelley, however, sprained his 
ancle, and a mule-carriage was provided for the party. In this con- 
veyance they reached the Jura, and entered Switzerland at Neuf- 
chatel. Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, was chosen for their 
residence ; and here Shelley began his romantic tale of The Assas- 
sins, a portion of which is printed in his prose works. Want of 
money compelled them soon to think of turning their steps home- 
ward ; and the back journey was performed upon the Reuss and 
Rhine. They reached Gravesend, after a bad passage, on the 13th 



g 8 SHELLEY. 

of September. Mrs. Shelley's History of a Six Weeks' Tour re- 
lates the details of this trip, which was of great importance in form- 
ing Shelley's taste, and in supplying him with the scenery of river, 
rock, and mountain, so splendidly utilised in Alastor. 

The autumn was a period of more than usual money difficulty ; 
but on the 6th of January, 1815, Sir Bysshe died, Percy became 
the next heir to the baronetcy and the family estates, and an 
arrangement was made with his father by right of which he received 
an allowance of 1000/. a year. A portion of his income was im- 
mediately set apart for Harriet. The winter was passed in London, 
where Shelley walked a hospital, in order, it is said, to acquire 
some medical knowledge that might be of service to the poor he 
visited. His own health at this period was very bad. A physician 
whom he consulted pronounced that he was rapidly sinking under 
pulmonary disease, and he suffered frequent attacks of acute pain. 
The consumptive symptoms seem to have been so marked that for 
the next three years he had no doubt that he was destined to an 
early death. In 1818, however, all danger of phthisis passed away ; 
and during the rest of his short life he only suffered from spasms 
and violent pains in the side, which baffled the physicians, but, 
though they caused him extreme anguish, did not menace any vital 
organ. To the subject of his health it will be necessary to return 
at a later period of this biography. For the present it is enough 
to remember that his physical condition was such as to justify his 
own expectation of death at no distant time.* 

Fond as ever of wandering, Shelley set out in the early summer 
for a tour with Mary. They visited r Devonshire and Clifton, and 
then settled in a house on Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Forest. 
The summer was further broken by a water excursion up the 
Thames to its source, in the company of Mr. Peacock and Charles 
Clairmont. Peacock traces the poet's taste for boating, which af- 
terwards became a passion with him, to this excursion. About this 
there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us that Shelley 
while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he enjoyed 
the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W. S.. Halliday, a 
far better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never 
saw Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to 
prove that he practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though 
inordinately fond of boats and every kind of water— river, sea, lake, 
or canal — he never learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit 
of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the 
boredom suffered by Hogg on occasions when Shelley would stop 
-,y the side of pond or mere to float a mimic navy. The not alto- 
gether apocryphal story of his having once constructed a boat out 
of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake in Kensington Gar- 
dens, deserves to be alluded to in this connexion. 

On their return from this river journey, Shelley began the poem 
of Alastor, haunting the woodland glades and oak'groves ot Wind- 
See Letter to Godwin in Shelley's Memorials, p. 78. 



SHELLEY. 59 

sor Forest, and drawing from that noble scenery his inspiration. 
It was printed with a few other poems in one volume the next year. 
Not only was Alastor the first serious poem published by Shelley ; 
but it was also the first of his compositions which revealed the 
greatness ot his genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with 
more majesty and music : and while the influence of Milton and 
Wordsworth may be traced in certain passages, the versification, 
tremulous with lyrical vibrations, is such as only Shelley could 
have produced. 

"Alastor " is the Greek name for a vengeful daemon, driving its 
victim into desert places ; and Shelley, prompted by Peacock, chose 
it for the title of a poem which describes the Nemesis of solitary 
souls. Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, Alastor has 
great autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was writ- 
ten under the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense^ of 
disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. 
This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which 
threads the wilderness of its sublime descriptions. All that Shel- 
ley had observed of natural beauty— in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzer- 
land, upon the eddies of the Reuss, beneath the oak shades of the 
forest— is presented to us in a series of pictures penetrated with 
profound emotion. But the deeper meaning of Alastor is to be 
found, not in the thought of death nor in the poet's recent commu- 
nings with nature, but in the motto from St. Augustine placed upon 
its title-page, and in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, composed 
about a year later. Enamoured of ideal loveliness, the poet pur- 
sues his vision through the universe, vainly hoping to assuage the 
thirst which has been stimulated in his spirit, and vainly longing 
for somelhortal realisation of his love. Alastor, like Eftipsychidion, 
reveals the mistake which Shelley made in thinking that the idea of 
beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly from : while 
the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty recognises the truth that such 
realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written 
by Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: " I think one 
is always in love with something or other ; the error, and I confess 
it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists 
in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eter- 
nal." But this Shelley discovered only with "the years that bring 
the philosophic mind," and when he was upon the very verge of 
his untimely death. 

The following quotation is a fair specimen of the blank verse 
of Alastor. It expresses that longing for perfect sympathy in an 
ideal love, which the sense of divine beauty had stirred in the 
poet's heart : — 

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 

He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 

Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged 

His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 

Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 

It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings 



6o SHELLEY. 

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 

High over the immeasurable main. 

His eyes pursued its flight : — " Thou hast a home, 

Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, 

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 

And what am I that I should linger here, 

With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 

Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 

To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 

In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 

That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile 

Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 

For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly _ 

Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed, 

Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, 

With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 

William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born 
on the 24th of Jan., 1816. In the spring of that year they went 
together, accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to 
Switzerland. They reached Geneva on the 17th of May, and 
were soon after joined by Lord Byron and his travelling physician, 
Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet made Byron's acquaintance, 
though he had sent him a copy of Qiteen Mab, with a letter, which 
miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into daily inter- 
course, occupying the villas Diodati and Mont Alegre, at no great 
distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a 
boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. 
Miss Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance 
now ripened into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child 
Allegra. This fact has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, 
because Allegra afterwards became an inmate of his home ; and 
though he and Mary were ignorant of what was passing at Geneva, 
they did not withdraw their sympathy from the mothei 01 Lord 
Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley during the 
next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were to 
seek in Italy an exile-home ; while their friendship was to become 
one of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The 
influence of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowl- 
edged, and as his wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, 
depressing. For Byron's genius and its fruits in poetry he en- 
tertained the highest possible opinion. He could not help com- 
paring his own achievement and his fame with Byron's ; and the 
result was that in the presence of one whom he erroneously be- 
lieved to be the greater poet, he became inactive. Shelley on the 
contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to nobler efforts, 
raised his moral tone,' and infused into his less subtle intellect 
something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much 
as he enjoved Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley 
was not blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch 



SHELLEY. 6 1 

which he has left us of Count Maddalo, the letters, written to his 
wife from Venice and Ravenna, and his correspondence on the 
subject of Leigh Hunt's visit to Italy, supply the most discriminat- 
ing criticism which has yet been passed upon his brother poet's 
character. It is clear that he never found in Byron a perfect friend, 
and that he had not accepted him as one with whom he sympathised 
upon the deeper questions of feeling and conduct. Byron, for his 
part, recognised in Shelley the purest nature he had ever known. 
" He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least worldly- 
minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond 
all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity 
as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal 
of all that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this 
ideal even to the very letter." 

Toward the end of June the two poets made the tour of Lake 
Geneva in their boat, and were very nearly wrecked off the rocks of 
Meillerie. On this occasion Shelley was in imminent danger of 
death from drowning. His one anxiety, however, as he wrote to 
Peacock, was lest Byron should attempt to save him at the risk of 
his own life. Byron described him as "bold as a lion; " and in- 
deed it may here be said, once and for all, that Shelley's physical 
courage was only equalled by his moral fearlessness. He carried 
both without bravado to the verge of temerity, and may justly be 
said to have never known what terror was. Another summer 
excursion was a visit to Chamouni, of which he has left memorable 
descriptions in his letters to Peacock, and in the somewhat Col- 
eridgian verses on Mont Blanc. The preface to Laon and Cythna 
shows what a powerful impression had been made upon him by 
the glaciers, and how he delighted in the element of peril. There 
is a tone of exultation in the words which record the experiences 
of his two journeys in Switzerland and France : — " I have been 
familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and 
the solitude of forests. Danger, which sports upon the brink of 
precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of 
the, Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a 
wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, 
and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I 
sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains^ I 
have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which 
rise and spread, and sink and change amongst assembled multi- 
tudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the most visible ravages 
of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups 
of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting 
famished upon the desolated thresholds." 

On their return to the lake, the Shelleys found M. G. Lewis 
established with Byron. This addition to the circle introduced 
much conversation about apparitions, and each member of the 
party undertook to produce a ghost story. Polidori's Vamftyre 
and Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein were the only durable results of 
their determination. But an incident occurred which is of some im- 



6 2 SHELLEY. 

portance in the history of Shelley's psychological condition. To- 
ward midnight on the 18th of July, Byron recited the lines in 
Christabel about the lady's breast; when Shelley suddenly started 
up, shrieked, and fled from the room. He had seen a vision of a 
woman with eyes instead of nipples. At this time he was writing 
notes upon the phenomena of sleep to be inserted in his Speculations 
on Metaphysics, and Mrs. Shelley informs us that the mere effort 
to remember dreams of thrilling or mysterious import so disturbed 
his nervous system that he had to relinquish the task. At no 
period of his life was he wholly free from visions which had 
the reality of facts. Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were 
prolonged with painful vividness into his waking moments. Some- 
times they seemed to grow out of his intense meditation, or to 
present themselves before his eyes as the projection of a powerful 
inner impression. All his sensations were abnormally acute, and 
his ever-active imagination confused the border-lands of the actual 
and the visionary. Such a nature as Shelley's, through its far 
greater susceptibility than is common even with artistic tempera- 
ments, was debarred in moments of high-strung emotion from 
observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object ; and 
this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to 
estimate the proper proportions of Dichtung und Wahrheit in 
certain episodes of his biography. The strange story, for ex- 
ample, told by Peacock about a supposed warning he had received 
in the spring of this year from Mr. Williams of Tremadoc, may 
possibly be explained on the hypothesis that his brooding thoughts 
had taken form before him, both ear and eye having been uncon- 
sciously pressed into the service of a subjective energy.* 

On their return to England in September, Shelley took a cottage 
at Great Marlow on the Thames, in order to be near his friend 
Peacock. While it was being prepared for the reception of his 
family, he stayed at Bath, and there heard of Harriet's sucide. 
The life that once was dearest to him, had ended thus in misery, 
desertion, want. The mother of his two children, abandoned by 
both her husband and her lover, and driven from her father's home, 
had drowned herself after a brief struggle with circumstance. 
However Shelley may have felt that his conscience was free from 
blame, however small an element of self-reproach may have min- 
gled with his grief and horror, there is no doubt that he suffered 
most acutely. His deepest ground for remorse seems to have 
been the conviction that he had drawn Harriet into a sphere of 
thought and feeling for which she was not qualified, and that had 
it not been for him and his opinions, she might have lived a happy 
woman in some common walk of life. One of his biographers as- 
serts that "he continued to be haunted by certain recollections, 
partly real and partly imaginative, which pursued him like an 
Orestes," and even Trelawny, who knew him only in the last 
months of his life, said that the impression of that dreadful mo- 

* Fraser's Magazine, Jan., 1860, p. 98. 




SHELLEY. 



63 



merit was still vivid. We may trace the echo of his feelings in 
some painfully pathetic verses written in 1817;* and though he 
did not often speak of Harriet, Peacock has recorded one memor- 
able occasion on which he disclosed the anguish of his spirit to a 

friend, f 

Shelley hurried at once to London, and found some consolation 
in the society of Leigh Hunt. The friendship extended to him by 
that excellent man at this season of his trouble may perhaps count 
for something with those who are inclined to judge him harshly. 
Two important events followed immediately upon the tragedy. 
The first was Shelley's marriage with Mary Godwin on the 30th 
of December, 181 6. Whether Shelley would have taken this step ex- 
cept under strong pressure from without, appears to me very doubt- 
ful. Of all men who ever lived, he was the most resolutely bent on 
confirming his theories by his practice ; and in this instance there was 
no valid reason why he should not act up to principles professed in 
common by himself and the partner of his fortunes, no less than 
by her father and her mother. It is, therefore, reasonable to sup- 
pose that he yielded to arguments ; and these arguments must 
have been urged by Godwin, who had never treated him with cor- 
diality since he left England in 181 6. Godwin, though overrated 
in his generation, and almost ludicrously idealised by Shelley, was 
a man whose talents verged on genius. But he was by no means 
consistent. His conduct in money-matters shows that he could 
not live the life of a self-sufficing philosopher ; while the irritation 
he expressed when Shelley omitted to address him as Esquire, 
stood in comic contradiction with his published doctrines. We 
are therefore perhaps justified in concluding that he worried Shel- 
ley, the one enthusiastic and thorough-going follower he had, into 
marrying his daughter in spite of his disciple's protestations ; nor 
shall we be 'far wrong if we surmise that Godwin congratulated 
himself on Mary's having won the right to bear the name of a 
future baronet. 

The second event was the refusal of Mr. Westbrook to deliver 
up the custody of his grandchildren. A chancery suit was insti- 
tuted? at the conclusion of which, in August, 1817, Lord Eldon de- 
prived Shelley of his son and daughter "on the double ground of 
his opinions expressed in Queen Mab, and of hi\ conduct toward 
his first wife. The children were placed in the hands of a clergy- 
man, to be educated in accordance with principles diametrically 
opposed to their parent's, while Shelley's income was mulcted in a 
sum of 200/. for their maintenance. Thus sternly did the father 
learn the value of that ancient yEschylean maxim, rw dpa<ravrt -o- 
ffstv, the doer of the deed must suffer. His own impulsiveness, 
his reckless assumption of the heaviest responsibilities, his over- 
weening confidence in his own strength to move the weight of the 
world's opinions/had brought him to this tragic pass— to the suicide 
of the^ woman who had loved him, and to the sequestration of the 
offspring whom he loved. 

* Forman. iii. 148 * Fraser, Jan., i860, p. 102. 



6 4 



SHELLEY. 



Shelley is too great to serve as text for any sermon ; and yet 
we may learn from him as from a hero of Hebrew or Hellenic 
story. His life was a tragedy ; and like some protagonist of Greek 
drama, he was capable of erring and of suffering greatly. He had 
kicked against the altar of justice as established in the daily sanc- 
tities of human life ; and now he had to bear the penalty. The 
conventions he despised and treated like the dust beneath his feet 
were found in this most cruel crisis to be a rock on which his very 
heart was broken. From this rude trial of his moral nature he arose 
a stronger being ; and if longer life had been granted him, he 
would undoubtedly have presented the ennobling spectacle of one 
who had been lessoned by his own audacity, and by its bitter fruits, 
into harmony with the immutable laws which he was ever seeking 
to obey. It is just this conflict between the innate rectitude of 
Shelley's over-daring nature and the circumstances of ordinary 
existence, which makes his history so tragic ; and we may justly 
wonder whether, when he read the Sophoclean tragedies of CEdipus, 
he did not apply their doctrine of self-will and Nemesis to his own 
fortunes. 



SHELLEY. 65 



CHAPTER V. 

LIFE AT MARLOW, AND JOURNEY TO ITALY. 

Amid the torturing distractions of the Chancery suit about his 
children, and the still more poignant anguish of his own heart, and 
with the cloud, of what he thought swift-coming death above his 
head, Shelley worked steadily, during the summer of 181 7, upon 
his poem of Laon and Cythna. Six months were spent in this 
task. " The poem," to borrow Mrs. Shelley's words, " was written 
in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of Bisham, or dur- 
ing wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished 
for peculiar beauty." Whenever Shelley could, he composed in 
the open air. The terraces of the Villa Cappuccini at Este and the 
Baths of Caracalla were the birthplace of Prometheus. The Cenci 
was written on the roof of the Villa Valsovano at Leghorn. The 
Cascine of Florence, the pine-woods near Pisa, the lawns above 
San Giuliano, and the summits of the Euganean Hills, witnessed 
the creation of his loveliest lyrics ; and his last great poem, the 
Triumph of 'Life ', was transferred to paper in his boat upon the 
Bay of Spezia. 

If A las for had expressed one side of Shelley's nature, his devo- 
tion to Ideal Beauty, Laon and Cythna was in a far profounder 
sense representative of its author. All his previous experiences 
and all his aspirations — his passionate belief in friendship, his prin- 
ciple of the equality of women with men, his demand for bloodless 
revolution, his confidence in eloquence and reason to move nations, 
his doctrine of free love, his vegetarianism, his hatred of religious 
intolerance and tyranny — are blent together and concentrated in the 
glowing cantos of this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is 
himself idealised, the self which he imagined when he undertook 
his Irish campaign. The heroine, Cythna, is the helpmate he had 
always dreamed, the woman exquisitely feminine, yet capable of 
being fired with male enthusiasms, and of grappling the real prob- 
lems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In the first edition of 
the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother and sister, not because 
he believed in the desirability of incest, but because he wished to 
throw a glove down to society, and to attack the intolerance of cus- 
tom in its stronghold. In the preface, he tells us that it was his 
purpose to kindle in the bosoms of his readers " a virtuous enthu- 
siasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope 

S 



66 SHELLEY. 

in something good, which neither violence, nor misrepresentation^ 
nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind ; " to il- 
lustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after 
excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind ; " and to celebrate 
Love " as the sole law which should govern the moral world." The 
wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem 
highly characteristic of its author. It is written in Spenserian 
stanzas, with a rapidity of movement and a dazzling brilliance that 
are Shelley's own. The story relates the kindling of a nation to 
freedom at the cry of a young poet-prophet, the temporary triumph 
of the good cause, the final victory of despotic force, and the mar- 
tyrdrom of the hero, together with whom the heroine falls a willing 
victim. It is full of thrilling incidents and lovely pictures ; yet the 
tale is the least part of the poem ; and few readers have probably 
been able either to sympathise with its visionary characters, or to 
follow the narrative without weariness. As in the case of other 
poems by Shelley — especially those in which he attempted to tell 
a story, for which kind of art his genius was not well suited — the 
central motive of Laon and Cythna is surrounded by so radiant a 
photosphere of imagery and eloquence that it is difficult to fix our 
gaze upon it, blinded as we are by the excess of splendour. Yet 
no one now can read the terrible tenth canto, or the lovely fifth, 
without feeling that a young eagle of poetry had here tried tie full 
strength of his pinions in their flight. This truth was by no means 
recognised when Laon and Cythna first appeared before the public. 
Hooted down, derided, stigmatised, and howled at, it only served to 
intensify the prejudice with which the author of Queen Mab had 
come to be regarded. 

I have spoken of this poem under its first name of Laon and 
Cythna. A certain number of copies were issued with this title ; * 
but the publisher, Oilier, not without reason dreaded the effect the 
book would make ; he therefore induced Shelley to alter the rela- 
tionship between the hero and his bride, and issued the old sheets 
with certain cancelled pages under the title of Revolt of Lslam. It 
was published in January, 1818. While still resident at Marlow Shel- 
ley began two autobiographical poems — the one Prince Athanase 
which he abandoned as too introspective and morbidly self-analyti- 
cal, the other Rosalind and Helen, which he finished afterwards 
in Italy. Of the second of these compositions he entertained a 
poor opinion ; nor will it bear comparison with his best work. To 
his biographer its chief interest consists in the character of Lionel, 
drawn less perhaps exactly from himself than as an ideal of the 
man he would have wished to be. The poet in Alastor, Laon in 
the Revolt of Lslam, Lionel in Rosalind and Helen, and Prince 
Athanase, are in fact a remarkable row of self-portraits, varying in 
the tone and scale of idealistic treatment bestowed upon them. 
Later on in life, Shelley outgrew this preoccupation with his ideal- 



* How many copies were put in circulation is not known. There must certainly have 
been many more than the traditional three, for when I was a boy at Harrow, I picked up 
two uncut copies in boards at a Bristol bookshop, for the price of 2s. 6d. a piece. 



a 



SHELLEY. 67 

ised self, and directed his genius to more objective themes. Yet 
the autobiographic tendency, as befitted a poet of the highest lyric 
type, remained to the end a powerful characteristic. 

Before quitting the first period of Shelley's development, it may 
be well to set before the reader a specimen of that self-delineative 
poetry which characterised it ; and since it is difficult to detach a 
single passage from the continuous stanzas of Laon and Cythna, I 
have chosen the lines in Rosalind and Helen which describe 
young Lionel : 

To Lionel, 
Though of great wealth and lineage high, 
Yet through those dungeon walls there came 
Thy thrilling light, O Ufeerty ! 
And as the meteor's midnight flame 
Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth 
Flashed on his visionary youth, 
And filled him, not with love, but faith, 
And hope, and courage mute in death ; 
For love and life in him were twins, 
Born at one birth : in every other 
First life, then love its course begins, 
Though they be children of one mother ; 
And so through this dark world they fleet 
Divided, till in death they meet: 
But he loved all things ever. Then 
He past amid the strife of men, 
And stood at the throne of armed power 
Pleading for a world of woe : 
Secure as one on a rock-built tower 
O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, 
'Mid the passions wild of human kind 
He stood, like a spirit calming them ; 
For, it was said, his words could find 
Like music the lulled crowd, and stem 
That torrent of unquiet dream, 
Which mortals truth and reason deem, 
But is revenge and fear and pride. 
Joyous he was ; and hope and peace 
On all who heard him did abide, 
Raining like dew from his sweet talk, 
As where the evening star may walk 
Along the brink of the gloomy seas, 
Liquid mists of splendour quiver. 
His very gestures touch'd to tears 
The unpersuaded tyrant, never 
So moved before : his presence stung 
The torturers with their victim's pain, 
And none knew how ; and through their ears. 
The subtle witchcraft of his tongue 
Unlocked the hearts of those who keep 
Gold, the world's bond of slavery. 
Men wondered, and some sneer'd to see 
One sow what he could never reap : 
For he is rich, they said, and young, 



68 SHELLEY. 

And might drink from the depths of luxury. 
If he seeks Fame, Fame never crown'd 
The champion of a trampled creed : 
If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned 
'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed 
Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, 
Those who would sit near Power must toil ; 
And such, there sitting, all may see. 

During the year he spent at Marlow, Shelley was a irequent 
visitor at Leigh Hunt's Hampstead house, where he made ac- 
quaintance with Keats, and the brothers Smith, authors of Re- 
jected Addresses. Hunt's recollections supply some interesting 
details, which, since Hogg and Peacock fail us at this period, may 
be profitably used. Describing the manner of his life at Marlow, 
Hunt writes as follows : " He rose early in the morning, walked 
and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and 
studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, 
dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed 
with his friends (to whom his house was ever open), again walked 
out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o'clock, 
when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book 
was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedians, or 
the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often 
admiring interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of Job." 
Mrs. Shelley, in her note on the Revolt of Islam, confirms this 
account of his Bible studies ; and indeed the influence of the Old 
Testament upon his style may be traced in several of his poems. 
In the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, Leigh Hunt 
gives a just notion of his relation to Christianity, pointing out 
that he drew a distinction between the Pauline presentation of the 
Christian creeds, and the spirit of the Gospels. " His want of 
faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christi- 
anity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very formidable to 
those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes on that 
point." We have only to read Essays on Christianity, in order 
to perceive what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, and how 
profoundly he understood the true character of his teaching. 
That work, brief as it is, forms one of the most valuable extant 
contributions to a sound theology, and is morally far in advance of 
the opinions expressed by many who regard themselves as specially 
qualified to speak on the subject. It is certain that, as Christianity 
passes beyond its mediaeval phase, and casts aside the husk of 
outworn dogmas, it will more and more approximate to Shelley's 
exposition. Here and here only is a vital faith, adapted to the 
conditions of modern thought, indestructible because essential, 
and fitted to unite instead of separating minds of divers quality. 
It may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley of all men a clear 
insight into the enduring element of the Christian creed ; but it was 
precisely his detachment from all its accidents which enabled him 
to discern its spiritual purity, and placed him in a true relation to 






SHELLEY. 69 

its Founder. For those who would neither on the one hand relin- 
quish what is permanent in religion, nor yet on the other deny the 
inevitable conclusions of modern thought, his teaching is indubita- 
bly valuable. His fierce tirades against historic Christianity must 
be taken as directed against an ecclesiastical system of spiritual, 
tyranny, hypocrisy, and superstition, which in his opinion had re- 
tarded the growth of free institutions, and fettered the human in- 
tellect. Like Campanella, he distinguished between Christ, who 
sealed the gospel of charity with his blood, and those Christians 
who would be the first to crucify their Lord if he returned to earth. 

That Shelley lived up to his religious creed is amply proved, 
To help the needy and to relieve the sick, seemed to him a simple 
duty which he cheerfully discharged. " His charity, though liberal, 
was not weak. He inquired personally into the circumstances of 
his petitioners, visited the sick in their beds, .... and kept a 
regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with small sums 
to make up their accounts." At Marlow, the miserable condition 
of the lace-makers called forth all his energies ; and Mrs. Shelley 
tells us that an acute ophthalmia, from which he twice suffered, was 
contracted in a visit to their cottages. A story told by Leigh Hunt 
about his finding a woman ill on Hampstead Heath, and carrying 
her from door to door in the vain hopes of meeting with a man as 
charitable as himself, until he had to house the poor creature with 
his friends the Hunts, reads like a practical illustration of Christ's 
parable about the Good Samaritan. Nor was it merely to the so- 
called poor that Shelley showed his generosity. His purse was al- 
ways open to his friends. Peacock received from him an annual 
allowance of 100/. He gave Leigh Hunt, on one occasion, 1400/. ; 
and he discharged debts of Godwin, amounting, it is said, to about 
6000/. In his pamphlet on Putting Refortn to the Vote, he offered 
to subscribe 100/. for the purpose of founding an association; and 
we have already seen that he headed the Tremadoc subscription 
with a sum of 500/. These instances of his generosity might be 
easily multiplied ; and when we remember that his present income 
was 1000/., out of which 200/. went to the support of his children, 
it will be understood not only that he could not live luxuriously, 
but also that he was in frequent money difficulties through the ne- 
cessity of raising funds upon his expectations. His self-denial in 
all minor matters of expenditure was conspicuous. Without a 
murmur, without ostentation, this heir of the richest baronet in Sus- 
sex illustrated by his own conduct those principles of democratic 
simplicity and of fraternal charity which formed his political and 
social creed. 

A glimpse into the cottage at Great Marlow is afforded by a 
careless sentence of Leigh Hunt's. " He used to sit in a study 
adorned with casts, as large as life, of the Vatican Apollo and the 
celestial Venus." Fancy Shelley with his bright eyes and elf-locks 
in a tiny, low-roofed room, correcting proofs of Laon and Cythna, 
between the Apollo of the Belvedere and the Venus de' Medici, 
life-sized, and as crude as casts by Shout could make them ! In 



7 o 



SHELLEY. 



this house, Miss Clairmount, with her brother and Allegra, lived 
as Shelley's guests ; and here Clara Shelley was born on the 3rd 
of September, 181 7. In the same autumn, Shelley suffered from a 
severe pulmonary attack. The critical state of his health, and the 
apprehension, vouched for by Mrs. Shelley, that the Chancellor 
might lay his vulture's talons on the children of his second mar- 
riage, were the motives which induced him to leave England for 
Italy in the spring of 1818.* He never returned. Four years only 
of life were left to him — years filled with music that will sound 
as long as English lasts. 

It was on the 1 ith of March that the Shelleys took their departure 
with Miss Clairmont and the child Allegra. They went straight to 
Milan, and after visiting the Lake of Como, Pisa, the Bagni di 
Lucca, Venice, and Rome, they settled early in the following Decem- 
ber at Naples. Shelley's letters to Peacock form the invaluable 
record of this period of his existence. Taken altogether, they are 
the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the English 
language ; never over-charged with colour, vibrating with emotions 
excited by the stimulating scenes of Italy, frank in criticism, and 
exquisitely delicate in observation. Their transparent sincerity and 
unpremeditated grace, combined with natural finish of expression, 
make them masterpieces of a style at once familiar and elevated. 
That Shelley's sensibility to art was not so highly cultivated as his 
feeling for nature, is clear enough in many passages : but there is 
no trace of admiring to order in his comments upon pictures or stat- 
ues. Familiarity with the great works of antique and Italian art would 
doubtless have altered some of the opinions he at first expressed ; 
just as longer residence among the people made him modify his views 
about their character. Meanwhile, the spirit of modest and unprej- 
udiced attention in which he began his studies of sculpture and 
painting, might well be imitated in the present day by travellers 
who think that to pin their faith to some famous critic's verdict is 
the acme of good taste. If there was space for a long quotation 
from these letters, I should choose the description of Pompeii (Jan. 
26, 1 81 9, or that of the Baths of Caracalla (March 23, 1819). As it 
is, I must content myself with a short but eminently characteristic 
passage, written from Ferrara, Nov. 7, 1818 : — 

The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, firm, and pointed character, ex- 
pressing, as I should say, a strong and keen, but circumscribed energy of 
mind ; that of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a 
checked expression in the midst of its flow, which brings the letters into a 
smaller compass than one expected from the beginning of the word. It is 
the symbol of an intense and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own 
depth, and admonished to return by the dullness of the waters of oblivion 
striking upon its adventurous feet. You know I always seek in what I see 
the manifestation of something beyond the present and tangible object ; 
and as we do not agree in physiognomy, so we may not agree now. But 
my business is to relate my own sensations, and not to attempt to inspire 
others with them. 



* See Note on Poem3 of 18 1^ and Compare the lyric "The billows on the beach.' 






1 



SHELLEY. 



7* 



In the middle of August, Shelley left his wife at the Bagni di 
Lucca, and paid a visit to Lord Byron at Venice. He arrived at 
midnight in a thunderstorm. Julian and Maddalo was the literary 
fruit of this excursion — a poem which has rightly been characterised 
by Mr. Rossetti as the most perfect specimen in our language of the 
" poetical treatment of ordinary things. * The description of a 
Venetian sunset, touched to sadness amid all its splendour by the 
gloomy presence of the madhouse, ranks among Shelley's finest 
word-paintings ; while the glimpse of Byron's life is interesting on 
a lower level. Here is the picture of the sunset and the island of 
San Lazzaro : — 

Oh! 
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow 
Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, 
Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, 
Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers 
Of cities they encircle ! — It was ours 
To stand on thee, beholding it : and then, 
Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men 
Were waiting for us with the gondola. 
As those who pause on some delightful way, 
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood 
Looking upon the evening, and the flood 
Which lay between the city and the shore, 
Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar 
And airy Alps, towards the north, appeared, 
Thro' mist, a heaven-sustaining bulwark, reared 
Between the east and west; and half the sky 
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, 
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew 
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue 
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent 
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent 
Among the many-folded hills. They were 
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, 
As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, 
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles — 
And then, as if the earth and sea had been 
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen 
Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, 
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came 
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made 
Their very peaks transparent. " Ere it fade," 
Said my companion, " I will show you soon 
A better station." So, o'er the lagune 
We glided ; and from that funereal bark 
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark 
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, 
Its temples and its palaces did seem 
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 
I was about to speak, when — u We are even 
Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo, 
And bade the gondolieri cease to row. 



72 SHELLEY. 

" Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well 

If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." 

I looked, and saw between us and the sun 

A building on an island, such a one 

As age to age might add, for uses vile,, — 

A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile ; 

And on the top an open tower, where hung 

A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung,- 

We could just hear its coarse and iron tongue: 

The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled 

In strong and black relief — " What we behold 

Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"^ 

Said Maddalo ; " and ever at this hour, 

Those who may cross the water hear that bell, 

Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, 

To vespers." 

It may be parenthetically observed that one of the few familiaf 
quotations from Shelley's poems occurs in Julian and Maddalo .•— 

Most wretched men 
Are cradled into poetry by wrong : 
They learn in suffering what they teach in song. 

Byron lent the Shelleys his villa of the Cappuccini near Este, 
where they spent some weeks in the autumn. Here Prometheus 
Unbound was begun, and the Lines written among Eugane an Hills 
were composed ; and here Clara became so ill that her parents 
thought it necessary to rush for medical assistance to Venice. 
They had forgotten their passport; but Shelley's irresistibleenergy 
overcame all difficulties, and they entered Venice — only in time, 
however, for the child to die. 

Nearly the whole of the winter was spent in Naples, where 
Shelley suffered from depression of more than ordinary depth. 
Mrs. Shelley attributed this gloom to the state of his health ; but 
Medwin tells a strange story, which, if it is not wholly a romance, 
may better account for the poet's melancholy. He says that so far 
back as the year 1816, on the night before his departure from 
London, "a married lady, young, handsome, and of noble connex- 
ions," came to him, avowed the passionate love she had conceived 
for him, and proposed that they should fly together.* He explained 
to her that his hand and heart had both been given irrevocably to 
another, and, after the expression of the most exalted sentiments 
on both sides, they parted. She followed him, however, from place 
to place ; and without intruding herself upon his notice, found 
some consolation in remaining near him. Now she arrived at 
Naples ; and at Naples she died. The web of Shelley's life was a 
wide one, and included more destinies than his own. Godwin, as 
we have reason to believe, attributed the suicide of Fanny Imlay 
to her hopeless love for Shelley ; and the tale of Harriet has been 

* Medwin's Life of Shelley, vol. i. 324. His date, ars from the context to be 

a misprint. 



J 



SHELLEY. 



73 



already told. Therefore there is nothing absolutely improbable in 
Medwin's story, especially when we remember that Hogg half-hu- 
morously tells us about Shelley's attraction for women in London. 
At any rate, the excessive wretchedness of the lyrics written at 
Naples can hardly be accounted for by the " constant and poignant 
physical sufferings " of which Mrs. Shelley speaks, since these 
were habitual to him. She was herself, moreover, under the im- 
pression that he was concealing something from her, and we know 
from her own words in another place that his " fear to wound the 
feelings of others " often impelled him to keep his deepest sorrows 
to himself.* 

All this while his health was steadily improving. The menace 
of consumption was removed ; and though he suffered from severe 
attacks of pain in the side, the cause of this persistent malady does 
not seem to have been ascertained. At Naples he was under treat- 
ment for disease of the liver. Afterwards, his symptoms were as- 
cribed to nephritis ; and it is certain that his greater or less free- 
dom from uneasiness varied with the quality of the water he 
drank. He was, for instance, forced to eschew the drinking water 
of Ravenna, because it aggravated his symptoms ; while Florence, 
for a similar reason, proved un unsuitable residence. The final 
settlement of the Shelleys at Pisa seems to have been determined by 
the fact that the water of that place agreed with him. That the 
spasms which from time to time attacked him were extremely 
serious, is abundantly proved by the testimony of those who lived 
with him at this period, and by his own letters. Some relief was 
obtained by mesmerism, a remedy suggested by Medwin; but the 
obstinacy of the torment preyed upon his spirits to such an extent, 
that even during the last months of his life, we find him begging 
Trelawny to procure him prussic acid as a final and effectual 
remedy for all the ills that flesh is heir to. It may be added that 
mental application increased the mischief, for he told Leigh Hunt 
that the composition of The Cenci had cost him a fresh seizure. 
Yet though his sufferings were indubitably real,the eminent physican, 
Vacca, could discover no organic disease ; and possibly Trelawny 
came near the truth when he attributed Shelley's spasms to insuffi- 
cient and irregular diet, and to a continual over-taxing of his 
nervous system. 

Mrs/ Shelley states that the change from England to Italy 
was in all respects beneficial to her husband. She was inclined to 
refer the depression from which he occasionally suffered, to his 
solitary habits ; and there are several passages in his own letters 
which connect his melancholy with solitude. It is obvious that 
when he found himself in the congenial company of Trelawny, 
Williams, Medwin, or the Gisbornes, he was simply happy ; and 
nothing could be further from the truth than to paint him as habit- 
ually sunk in gloom, On the contrary, we hear quite as much 
about his high spirits, his "Homeric laughter," his playfulness 

* Note on the revolt of Islam. 



74 



SHELLEY. 



with children, his readiness to join the amusements of his chosen 
circle, and his incomparable conversation, as we do about his 
solitary broodings, and the seasons when pain or bitter memories 
over-cast his heaven. Byron, who had some right to express a 
judgment in such a matter, described him as the most companionable 
man under the age of thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode 
and practised pistol-shooting with his brother bard, sat up late to 
talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, and even betted with him on one 
occsaion marked by questionable taste. All this is quite incom- 
patible with that martrydom to persecution, remorse or physical 
suffering, with which it pleased some romantic persons to invest 
the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The voice of a 
stranger, or a ring at the house-bell, heard from afar with Shelley's 
almost inconceivable quickness of preceptiori, was enough to make 
him leave the house ; and one of his prettiest poems is written on 
his mistaking his wife's mention of the Aziola, a little owl common 
enough in Tuscany, for an allusion to a tiresome visitor. This dis- 
like for intercourse with commonplace people was the source of some 
disagreement between him and Mrs. Shelley, and kept him further 
apart from Byron than he might otherwise have been. In a valuable 
letter recently published by Mr. Garnet, he writes : — " I detest all 
society — almost all, at least — and Lord Byron is the nucleus of all 
that is hateful and tiresome in it." And again, speaking about 
his wife to Trelawny, he said : — " She can't bear solitude, nor I 
society — the quick coupled with the dead." 

In the year 1818-19 the Shelleyshad no friends at all in Italy, 
except Lord Byron at Venice, and Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne at 
Leghorn. Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft 
and Godwin. She was a woman of much cultivation, devoid of 
prejudice, and, though less enthusiastic than Shelley liked, quite 
capable of appreciating the inestimable privilege of his acquaintance. 
Her husband, to use a now almost obsolete phrase, was a scholar 
and a gentleman. He shared his wife's enlightened opinions, and 
remained stanch through good and ill report to his new friends. 
At Rome and Naples they knew absolutely no one. Shelley's time 
was therefore passed in study and composition. In the previous 
summer he had translated the Symposium of Plato, and begun an 
essay on the Ethics of the Greeks, which remains unluckily a 
fragment. Together with Mary he read much Italian literature, 
and his observations on the chief Italian poets form a valuable 
contribution to their criticism. While he admired the splendour 
and invention of Ariosto, he could not tolerate his moral tone. 
Tasso struck him as cold and artificial, in spite of his " delicate 
moral sensibility." Boccaccio he preferred to both ; and his 
remarks on this prose-poet are extremely characteristic. " How 
much do I admire Boccaccio ! What descriptions of nature are 
those in his little introductions to every new day ! It s the morn- 
ing of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it obscure 
to us. Boccaccio seems to me to have possessed a deep sense of 
the fair ideal of human life, considered in its social relations. 



SHELLEY. 



75 



His more serious theories of love agree especially with mine. He 
often expresses things lightly too, which have serious meanings of 
a very beautiful kind. He is a moral casuist, the opposite of the 
Christian, stoical, ready-made, and worldly system of morals. Do 
you remember one little remark or rather maxim of his, which 
might do some good to the common, narrow-minded conceptions of 
love, — Bocca baciata, non perde ventura ; anzi rinnuova, come fa la 
luna 7 ? " Dante and Petrarch remained the objects of his lasting 
admiration, though the cruel Christianity of the Inferno seemed 
to him an ineradicable blot upon the greatest of Italian poems. 
Of Petrarch*s "tender and solemn enthusiasm," he speaks with the 
sympathy of one who understood the inner mysteries of idealising 
love. 

It will be gathered from the foregoing quotations that Shelley, 
notwithstanding his profound study of style and his exquisite per- 
ception of beauty in form and rhythm, required more than merely 
artistic excellences in poetry. He judged poems by their content 
and spirit ; and while he plainly expressed his abhorrence of the 
didactic manner, he held that art must be moralised in order to be 
truly great. The distinction he drew between Theocritus and the 
earlier Greek singers in the Defence of Poetry, his severe strictures 
on The Two Noble Kinsmen m a letter to Mary (Aug. 20, 181 8), and 
his phrase about Ariosto, " who is entertaining and graceful, and 
sometimes a poet," illustrate the application of critical canons wholly 
at variance with the " art for art " doctrine. 

While studying Italian, he continued faithful to Greek. Plato 
was often in his hands, and the dramatists formed his almost in- 
separable companions. How deeply he felt the art of the Homeric 
poems, may be gathered from the following extract : — " I congrat- 
ulate you on your conquest of the Iliad. You must have been as- 
tonished at the perpetually increasing magnificence of the last 
seven books. Homer there truly begins to be himself. The battle 
of the Scamander, the funeral of Patroclus, and the high and 
solemn close of the whole bloody tale in tenderness and inexpiable 
sorrow, are wrought in a manner incomparable with anything of 
the same kind. The Odyssey is sweet, but there is nothing like 
this." About this time, prompted by Mrs. Gisborne, he began 
the study of Spanish, and conceived an ardent admiration for Cal- 
deron, whose splendid and supernatural fancy tallied with his own. 
" I am bathing myself in the light and odour of the starry Au- 
tos," he writes to Mr. Gisborne in the autumn of 1820. Faust, too, 
was a favourite. " I have been reading over and over again Faust, 
and always with sensations which no other composition excites. 
It deepens the gloom and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would 
therefore seem to me an unfit study for any person who is a prey 
to the reproaches of memory, and the delusions of an imagination 
not to be restrained." The profound impression made upon him 
by Margaret's story is expressed in two letters about Retzsch's 
illustrations : — " The artist makes one envy his happiness that he 
can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared loofc 



76 SHELLEY. 

upon Once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch 
the leaf on the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured. " 
The fruits of this occupation with Greek, Italian, Spanish, and 
German were Shelley's translations from Homer and Euripides, 
from Dante, from Calderon's Magico Prodigioso, and from Faust, 
translations which have never been surpassed for beauty of form 
and complete transfusion of the spirit of one literature into the 
language of another. On translation, however, he set but little 
store, asserting that he only undertook it when he " could do ab- 
solutely nothing else," and writing earnestly to dissuade Leigh 
Hunt from devoting time which might be better spent, to work of 
subordinate importance.* The following version of a Greek epi- 
gram on Plato's spirit will illustrate his own method of translation : — 

Eagle ! why soarest thou above that tomb ? 
To what sublime and star-y-paven home 

Floatest thou ? 
I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, 
Ascending heaven : — Athens does inherit 

His corpse below. 

Some time in the year 1820-21, he composed the Defence of 
Poetry, stimulated to this undertaking by his friend Peacock's 
article on poetry, published in the Literary Mis eel lany. \ This 
essay not only sets forth his theory of his own art, but it also con- 
tains some of his finest prose waiting, of which the following pas- 
sage, valuable alike for matter and style, rr?ay be cited as a speci- 
men : — 

The functions of the poetical faculty are two-fold ; by one it creates new 
materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure ; by the other it engenders 
in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain 
rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The 
cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, 
from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation 
of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of 
assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has 
then become too unwieley for that which animates it. 

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circum- 
ference of knowledge ; it is that which comprehends all science, and that 
to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and 
blossom of all other systems of thought ; it is that from which all spring, 
and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and 
the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the 
succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and 
consummate surface and bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and the 
colour of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the 
form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and 
corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, frienship — what were the 
scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit — what were our consola- 
tions on this side of the grave — and what were our aspirations beyond it, if 

* Letter from Florence, Nov., 1819. 

t See Letter to Oilier, Jan. 20, 1820, Shelley Memorials, p. i35« 



SHELLEY. 77 

poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions 
where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar ? Poetry is 
not like reasoning, a power, to be exerted according to the determination 
of the will. A man cannot say, " I will compose poetry.'^ The greatest 
poet even cannot say it ; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which 
some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory 
brightness ; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which 
fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our 
natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could 
this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible 
to predict the greatness of the results ; but when composition begins, in- 
spiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has 
ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the 
orignal conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the 
present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of 
poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recom- 
mended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a care- 
ful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the 
spaces between their suggestions by the intermixture of conventional ex- 
pressions ; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical fa- 
culty itself; for Milton conceived the " Paradise Lost : " as a whole before 
he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse 
having u dictated " to him the " unpremeditated song." And let this be 
an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the 
first line of the " Orlando Furioso." Compositions so produced are to 
poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the 
poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts ; a 
great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the 
mother's womb ; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is 
incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media 
of the process. 

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest 
and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and 
feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding 
our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, 
but elevating and delightful beyond all expression : so that even in the 
desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating 
as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration 
of a divine nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like those of a 
wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain 
only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding 
conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate 
sensibility and the most enlarged imagination ; and the state of mind pro- 
duced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, 
love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions ; 
and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. 
Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most 
refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the 
evanescent hues of this ethereal world ; a word, a trait in the repre- 
sentation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and 
reanimate,in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, 
the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all 
that is best and most beautiful in the world ; it arrests the vanishing appa- 
ritions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in lan- 
guage or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news o£ 



78 SHELLEY. 

kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide — abide, because there 
is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit 
into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations 
of the divinity in man. 

In the midst of these aesthetic studies, and while producing his 
own greatest works, Shelley was not satisfied that his genius ought 
to be devoted to poetry. " I consider poetry, " he wrote to Peacock, 
January 26th, 1819, "very subordinate to moral and political science, 
and if I were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter ; for I can 
conceive a great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and har- 
monising the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled. 
Far from me is such an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercis- 
ing my fancy, to amuse myself, and perhaps some others, and cast 
what weight I can into the scale of that balance which the Giant of 
Arthegall holds." Whether he was right in the conviction that his 
genius was no less fitted for metaphysical speculation or for political 
science than for poetry, is a question that admits of much debate.* 
We have nothing but fragments whereby to form a definite opinion 
— the unfinished Defence of Poetry, the unfinished Essay on a 
Future State, the unfinished Essay on Christianity, the unfinished 
Essay on the Punishmefit of Death, and the scattered Speculations 
on Metaphysics, None of these compositions justify the belief so 
confidently expressed by Mrs. Shelley in her Preface to the prose 
works, that "had not Shelley deserted metaphysics for poetry in 
his youth, and had he not been lost to us early, so that all his vaster 
projects were wrecked with him in the waves, he would have pre- 
sented the world with a complete theory of mind ; a theory in which 
Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant would have contributed ; but more 
simple, unimpugnable, and entire than the systems of these writers. ,, 
Their incompleteness rather tends to confirm what she proceeds to 
state, that the strain of philosophical composition was too great for 
his susceptible nerves ; while her further observation that " thought 
kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him dizzy 
from too great keenness of emotion,' , seems to indicate that his 
nature was primarily that of a poet deeply tinctured with philoso- 
phical speculation, rather than that of a metaphysician warmed at 
intervals to an imaginative fervour. Another of her remarks con- 
firms us in this opinion. " He considered these philosophical views 
of mind and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry."f 
This is the position of the poet rather than the analyst ; and, on 
the whole, we are probably justified in concluding with Mrs. Shelley, 
that he followed a true instinct when he dedicated himself to poetry, 
and trained his powers in that direction.:]: To dogmatise upon the 
topic would be worse than foolish. There was something incalcul- 
able, incommensurable, and daemonic in Shelley's genius ; and what 
he might have achieved, had his life been spared and had his health 
progressively improved, it is of course impossible to say. 

* See Mrs. Shelley's note on the Revolt of Islam, and the whole Preface to the Prose 
Works. 

t Note on Prometheus. % Note on Revolt of Islam. 




SHELLEY. 



79 



In the spring of 1819 the Shelleys settled in Rome, where the 
poet proceeded with the composition of Prometheus Unbound. 
He used to write among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, not 
then, as now, despoiled of all their natural beauty, but waving with 
the Paradise of flowers and shrubs described in his incomparable 
letter of March the 23rd to Peacock. Rome, however, was not des- 
tined to retain them long. * On the 7th of June they lost their son 
William after a short illness. Shelley loved this child intensely, 
and sat by his bedside for sixty hours without taking rest. He was 
now practically childless ; and his grief found expression in many 
of his poems, especially in the fragment headed " Roma, Ro?na, 
Roma / non d ftiu com'' era pri??iay William was buried in the 
Protestant cemetery, of which Shelley had written a description to 
Peacock in the previous December. " The English burying-place 
is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, 
and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever be- 
held. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we 
first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of 
the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the 
tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm 
earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people 
who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the 
sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples 
with its wishes vacancy and oblivion." 

Escaping from the scene of so much sorrow, they established 
themselves at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn. Here Shelley 
began and finished The CencivX the instance of his wife, who rightly 
thought that he undervalued his own powers as a dramatic poet. 
The supposed portrait of Beatrice in the Barberini Palace had pow- 
erfully affected his imagination, and he fancied that her story would 
form the fitting subject for a tragedy. It is fortunate for English 
literature that the real facts of that domestic drama, as recently 
published by Signor Bertolotti, were then involved in a tissue of 
romance and legend. During this summer he saw a great deal of the 
Gisborne family. Mrs. Gisborne's son by a previous marriage, 
Henry Reveley, was an engineer, and Shelley conceived a project 
of helping him to build a steamer which should ply between Leg- 
horn and Marseilles. He was to supply the funds, and the pecuni- 
ary profit was to be shared by the Gisborne family. The scheme 
eventually fell through, though Shelley spent a good deal of money 
upon it ; and its only importance is the additional light it throws 
upon his public and private benevolence. From Leghorn the Shel- 
leys removed in the autumn to Florence, where, on the 12th of 
November, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley was born. 
Here Shelley wrote the last act of Prometheus Unbound, which, 
though the finest portion of that unique drama, seems to have been 
an afterthought. In the Cascine outside Florence he also composed 
the Ode to the West Wind, the most symmetrically perfect as well 
as the most impassioned of his minor lyrics. He spent much time 
in the galleries, made notes upon the principal antique statues, and 



g SHELLEY, 

formed a plan of systematic art-study. The climate, however, dis* 
agreed with him, and in the month of January, 1820, they took up 
their abode at Pisa. 

i8i9was the most important year in Shelley's life, so far as 
literary production is concerned. Besides The Cenci and Pro- 
metheus Unbound, of which it yet remains to speak, this year saw 
the production of several political and satirical poems — the Masq-ie 
of Anarchy, suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, 
being by far the most important. Shelley attempted the con- 
position of short popular songs which should stir the English 
people to a sense of what he felt to be their degradation. But he 
lacked the directness which alone could make such verses forcible, 
and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of England in his 
Masque of Anarchy marks the highest point of his achievement 
in this style : — 

Men of England, Heirs of Glory, 
Heroes of unwritten story, 
Nurslings of one mighty mother, 
Hopes of her, and one another ! 

Rise, like lions after slumber, 
In unvanquishable number, 
Shake your chains to earth like dew, 
Which in sleep had fall'n on you. 
Ye are many, they are few. 

Peter Bell the Third, written in this year, and Swell foot the 
Tyrant, composed in the following autumn, are remarkable as 
showing with what keen interest Shelley watched public affairs in 
England from his exile home ; but, for my own part, I cannot 
agree with those critics who esteem their humour at a high rate. 
The political poems may profitably be compared with his contem- 
porary correspondence ; with the letters, for instance, to Leigh 
Hunt, November 23rd, 1819; and to Mr. John Gisborne, April 
10th, 1822 ; and with an undated fragment published by Mr. Garnett 
in the Relics of Shelley, page 84. No student of English political 
history before the Reform Bill can regard his apprehensions of a 
great catastrophe as ill-founded. His insight into the real danger 
to the nation was as penetrating as his suggestion of a remedy 
was moderate. Those who are accustomed to think of the poet as 
a visionary enthusiast, will rub their eyes when they read the 
sober lines in which he warns his friend to be cautious about the 
security offered by the English Funds. Another letter, dated 
Lerici, June 29, 1822, illustrates the same practical temper of 
mind, the same logical application of political principles to questions 
of public economy. 

That Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci should have been 
composed in one and the same year must be reckoned among the 
greatest wonders of literature, not only because of their sublime 
greatness, but also because of their essential difference. >£schylus, 



f 



SHELLEY. 8 1 

it is well known, had written a sequel to his Prometheus Bound, 
in which he showed the final reconciliation between Zeus, the op- 
pressor, and Prometheus, the champion, of humanity. What that 
reconciliation was, we do not know, because the play is lost, and 
the fragments are too brief for supporting any probable hypothesis. 
But Shelley repudiated the notion of compromise. He could not 
conceive of the Titan " unsaying his high language, and quailing 
before his successful and perfidious adversary." He, therefore, 
approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different point 
of view. Prometheus in his drama is the humane vindicator of 
love, justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical op- 
pressor, and creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is 
the mind of man idealised, the spirit of our race, as Shelley 
thought it made to be. Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts 
its free development. Thus counterposed, the two chief actors 
represent the fundamental antitheses of good and evil, liberty 
and despotism, love and hate. They give the form of personality 
to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already expressed in the 
first canto of Laon and Cythna; but, instead of being represented 
on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into the 
reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists 
Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that 
the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and 
calmly expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, 
and leave the spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives ; Jove 
disappears ; the burdens of the world and men are suddenly re- 
moved ; a new age of peace and freedom and illimitable energy 
begins ; the whole universe partakes in the emancipation ; the 
spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain, but sings alternate 
love-songs with his sister orb, the moon ; Prometheus is re-united 
in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia, withdrawn 
from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in her 
exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. 
She is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, 
she rises in the ^Egean near the land called by her name ; and in 
the time of tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She 
is the Idea of Beauty incarnate, the shadow of the Light of Life 
which sustains the world and enkindles it with love, the reality 
of Alastor's vision, the breathing image of the awful loveliness 
apostrophised in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, the reflex of 
the splendour of which Adonais was a part. At the moment of 
her triumph she grows so beautiful that lone her sister cannot 
see her, only feels her influence. The essential thought of Shel- 
ley^ creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalised, made 
real by a spirit, which he sometimes called the spirit of Nature, 
but which is always conceived as more than Life, as that which 
gives its actuality to Life, and lastly as Love and Beauty. To 
adore this spirit, to clasp it with affection, and to blend with it, is, 
he thought, the true object of man. Therefore, the final union 
of Prometheus with Asia is the consummation of human destinies. 



g 2 SHELLEY. 

Love was the only law Shelley recognised. Unterrified by the 
grim realities of pain and crime revealed in nature and society, 
he held fast to the belief that, if we could but pierce to the core 
of things, if we could but be what we might be, the world and 
man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. What 
resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected 
by Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the uni- 
verse, we hardly know. He did not give his philosophy system- 
atic form : and his new science of love remains a luminous poetic 
vision — nowhere more brilliantly set forth than in the " sevenfold 
hallelujahs and harping symphonies " of this, the final triumph 
of his lyrical poetry. 

In Prometheus, Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, and 
sketched out the main figures on a scale of surpassing magnificence. 
While painting in these figures, he seems to reduce their propor- 
tions too much to the level of earthly life. He quits his god-creat- 
ing, heaven compelling-throne of mythopoeic inspiration, and de- 
scends to a love-story of Asia and Prometheus. In other words, 
he does not sustain the visionary and primeval dignity of these in- 
carnated abstractions ; nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated 
their characters in detail as to give them the substantiality of per- 
sons. There is therefore something vague and hollow in both fig- 
ures. Yet in the subordinate passages of the poem, the true myth- 
opoeic faculty — the faculty of finding concrete forms for thought, 
and of investing emotion with personality — shines forth with extra- 
ordinary force and clearness. We feel ourselves in the grasp of a 
primitive myth-maker while we read the description of Oceanus, 
and the raptures of the Earth and Moon. 

A genuine liking for Prometheus Unbound may be reckoned 
the touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. 
The world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit 
voices ; and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal 
dross than any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own 
heart's song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in 
Prometheus which seem to realise the miracle of making words, 
detached from meaning, the substance of a new ethereal music ; and 
yet, although their verbal harmony is such, they are never devoid 
of definite significance for those who understand. Shelley scorned 
the aesthetics of a school which finds "sense swooning into non- 
sense " admirable. And if a critic is so dull as to ask what " Life 
of Life ! thy lips enkindle" means, or to whom it is addressed, none 
can help him any more than one can help a man whose sense of 
hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A voice in the 
air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the moment of "her apotheosis :— 

Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them ; 

And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 

In those looks where whoso gazes 

Faints, entangled in their mazes. 



SHELLEY. S$ 

Child of Light 1 thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them, 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through the clouds, ere they divide them ; 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Fair are others ; none beholds thee. 

But thy voice sounds low and tender, 
Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendour, 
And all feel, yet see thee never 
As I feel now, lost for ever ! 

Lamp of Earth where'er thou movest 
Its dim shades are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! 

It has been said that Shelley, as a landscape painter, is decidedly 
Turneresque ; and there is much in Prometheus Unbound 'to justify 
this opinion. The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker 
shadows are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be 
continually radiated from the objects at which he looks ; and in 
this radiation of many-coloured lights, the outline itself apt to be 
a little misty. Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their 
spiritual essence. The actual world was less for him than that 
which lies within it and beyond it. " I seek" he says himself, " in 
what I see, the manifestation of something beyond the present and 
tangible object." For him, as for the poet described by one of the 
spirit voices in Prometheus, the bees in the ivy-bloom are scarcely 
heeded ; they become in his mind, — 

Forms more real than living man. 
Nurslings of immortality. 

And yet who could have brought the bees, the lake, the sun, the 
bloom, more perfectly before us than that picture does ?* What 
vignette is more exquisitely coloured and finished than the little 
study of a pair of halcyons in the third act ? f Blake is perhaps 
the only artist who could have illustrated this drama. He might 
have shadowed forth the choirs of spirits, the trailing voices and 
their thrilling songs, phantasmal Demogorgon, and the charioted 
Hour. Prometheus, too, with his " flowing limbs," has just Blake's 
fault of impersonation — the touch of unreality in that painter's 
Adam. 

Passing to the The Cenci, we change at once the moral and 
artistic atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely 
dirge, is absent. Image and description are alike sternly ex« 

* Forman, vol. ii. p. 181. t Forman, vol. ii. p. 231. 



8 4 



SHELLEY. 



eluded. Instead of soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly 
planted on the earth. In exchange for radiant visions of future 
perfection, we are brought into the sphere of dreadful passions — 
all the agony, endurance, and half-maddened action, of which luck- 
less human innocence is capable. To tell the legend of Beatrice 
Cenci here, is hardly needed. Her father, a monster of vice and 
cruelty, was bent upon breaking her spirit by imprisonment, torture, 
and nameless outrage. At last her patience ended ; and finding 
no redress in human justice, no champion of her helplessness in 
living man, she wrought his death. For this she died upon the 
scaffold, together with her step-mother and her brothers, who had 
aided in the execution of the murder. The interest of The Cenci, 
and it is overwhelmingly great, centres in Beatrice and her father ; 
from these two chief actors in the drama, all the other characters 
fall away into greater or less degrees of unsubstantiality. Perhaps 
Shelley intended this — as the maker of a bas-relief contrives two 
or three planes of figures for the presentation of his ruling group. 
Yet there appears to my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather 
than a deliberate intention, in the delineation of Orsino. He seems 
meant to be the wily, crafty, Machiavellian reptile, whose calcula- 
ting wickedness should form a contrast to the daemonic, reckless, 
almost maniacal fiendishness of old Francesco Cenci. But this 
conception of him wavers ; his love for Beatrice is too delicately 
tinted, and he is suffered to break down with an infirmity of con- 
science alien to such a nature. On the other hand the uneasy 
vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, born of feminine 
weakness and want of fibre, in Lucrezia, serve to throw the firm 
will of Beatrice into prominent relief ; while her innocence, sus- 
tained through extraordinary suffering in circumstances of excep- 
tional horror — the innocence of a noble nature thrust by no act of 
its own but by its wrongs beyond the pale of ordinary woman- 
kind — is contrasted with the merely childish guiltlessness of Ber- 
nardo. Beatrice rises to her full height in the fifth act, dilates and 
grows with the approach of danger, and fills the whole scene 
with her spirit on the point of death. Her sublime confidence in 
the justice and essential Tightness of her action, the glance of 
self-assured purity with which she annihilates the cut-throat brought 
to testify against her, her song in prison, and her tender solicitude 
for the frailer Lucrezia, are used with wonderful dramatic skill 
for the fulfilment of a feminine ideal at once delicate and powerful. 
Once and once only does she yield to ordinary weakness ; it is 
when the thought crosses her mind that she may meet her father 
in the other world, as once he came to her on earth. 

Shelley dedicated The Cenci to Leigh Hunt, saying that he had 
striven in this tragedy to cast aside the subjective manner of his 
earlier work, and to produce something at once more popular and 
more concrete, more sober in style, and with a firmer grasp on the 
realities of life. He was very desirous of getting it acted, and 
wrote to Peacock requesting him to offer it at Covent Garden. 
Miss O'Neil, he thought, would play the part of Beatrice admirably, 



SHELLEY. 

The manager, however, did not take this view ; averring that the 
subject rendered it incapable of being even submitted to an ac- 
tress like Miss O'Neil. Shelley's self-criticism is always so valuable, 
that it may be well here to collect what he said about the two great 
dramas of 1819. Concerning The Cenci he wrote to Peacock : — 
" It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions 
which characterise my other compositions ; I having attended 
simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is prob- 
able the persons represented really were, together with the great- 
est degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development." 
" Cenci is written for the multitude, and ought to sell well." " I 
believe it singularly fitted for the stage." " The Cenci is a work 
of art ; it is not coloured by my feelings, nor obscured by my meta- 
physics. 1 don't think much of it. It gave me less trouble than 
anything I have written of the same length." Prometheus, on the 
other hand, he tells Oilier, " is my favorite poem ; I charge you, 
therefore, specially to pet him and ieed him with fine ink and good 
paper" — which was duly done. Again : — u For Prometheus, I ex- 
pect and desire no great sale; Prometheus was never intended for 
more than five or six persons ; it is in my judgment of a higher 
character than anything I have yet attempted, and is perhaps less 
an imitation of anything that has gone before ; it is original, and 
cost me severe mental labour." Shelley was right in judging that 
The Cenci would be comparatively popular ; this was proved by the 
fact that it went through two editions in his lifetime. The value 
he set upon Prometheus as the higher work, will hardly be disputed. 
Unique in the history of literature, and displaying the specific 
qualities of its author at their height, the world could less easily 
afford to lose this drama than The Cenci, even though that be the 
greatest tragedy composed in English since the death of Shake- 
spere. For reasons which will be appreciated by lovers of dramatic 
poetry, I refrain from detaching portions of these two plays. Those 
who desire to make themselves acquainted with the author's genius, 
must devote long and patient study to the originals in their en- 
tirety. 

Prometheus Unbound, like the majority of Shelley's works, fell 
still-born from the press. It furnished punsters with a joke, how- 
ever, which went the round of several papers ; this poem, they cried, 
is well named, for who would bind it ? Of criticism that deserves 
the name, Shelley got absolutely nothing in his lifetime. The stu- 
pid but venomous reviews which gave him occasional pain, but 
which he mostly laughed at, need not now be mentioned. It is not 
much to any purpose to abuse the authors of mere rubbish. The 
real lesson to be learned from such of them as may possibly have 
been sincere,as well as from the failure of his contemporaries to ap- 
preciate his genius — the sneers of Moore, the stupidity of Campbell, 
the ignorance of Wordsworth, the priggishness of Southey, or the 
condescending tone of Keats — is that nothing is more difficult than 
for lesser men or equals to pay just homage to the greatest in their 
lifetime. Those who may be interested in studying Shelley's atti- 



86 SHELLEY. 

tude towards his critics, should read a letter addressed to Oilier 
from Florence, October 15, 181 9, soon after he had seen the vile 
attack upon him in the Quarterly, comparing this with the frag- 
ments of an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the preface to 
Adonais* It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with 
patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On 
the nth of June, 1821, he wrote to Oilier: — "As yet I have 
laughed ; but woe to those scoundrels if they should once make me 
lose my temper ! " The stanzas on the Quarterly in Adonais, 
and the invective against Lord Eldon, show what Shelley could 
have done if he had chosen to castigate the curs. Meanwhile the 
critics achieved what they intended. Shelley, as Trelawny emphat- 
ically tells us, was universally shunned, coldly treated by Byron's 
friends at Pisa, and regarded as a monster by such of the English 
in Italy as had not made his personal acquaintance. On one occa- 
sion he is even said to have been knocked down in a post-office by 
some big bully, who escaped before he could obtain his name and 
address ; but this is one of the stories rendered doubtful by lack of 
precise details. 

* Shelley Memorials, p. «i. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pp. 49, 180. Collected 
Letters, p, 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one vol. 1840. 



SHELLEY, 87 



CHAPTER VI. 
RESIDENCE AT PISA. 

On the 26th of January, 1820, the Shelleys established them- 
selves at Pisa. From this date forward to the 7th of July, 1822, 
Shelley's life divides itself into two periods of unequal length ; 
the first spent at Pisa, the baths of San Giuliano, and Leghorn ; 
the second at Lerici, on the Bay of Spezia. Without entering into 
minute particulars of dates or recording minor changes of residence 
it is possible to treat of the first and longer period in general. 
The house he inhabited at Pisa was on the south side of the Arno. 
After a few months he became the neighbour of Lord Byron, who 
engaged the Palazzo Lanfranchi in order to be near him ; and here 
many English and Italian friends gathered round them. Among 
these must be mentioned in the first place Captain Medwin, whose 
recollections of the Pisan residence are of considerable value, and 
next Captain Trelawny, who has left a record of Shelley's last days 
only equalled in vividness by Hogg's account of the Oxford period, 
and marked by signs of more unmistakable accuracy. Not less 
important members of this private circle were Mr. and Mrs. Edward 
Elleker Williams, with whom Shelley and his wife lived on terms 
of the closest friendship. Among Italians, the physician Vacca, 
the improvisatore Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of La Monaco, di 
Monza, have to be recorded. It will be seen from this enumera- 
tion that Shelley was no longer solitary; and indeed it would appear 
that now, upon the eve of his accidental death, he had begun to en- 
joy an immunity from many of his previous sufferings. Life ex- 
panded before him : his letters show that he was concentrating his 
powers and preparing for a fresh flight ; and the months, though 
ever productive of poetic masterpieces, promised a still more mag- 
nificent birth in the future. 

In the summer and autumn of 1820, Shelley produced some of 
his most genial poems : the Letter to Maria Gisborne, which might 
be mentioned as a pendent to Julian and Maddalo for its treat- 
ment of familiar things ; the Ode to a Skylark, that most popular 
of all his lyrics; the Witch of Atlas, unrivalled as an Ariel-flight 
of fairy fancy? and the Ode to Naples, which, together with the 
Ode to Liberty, added a new lyric form to English literature. In 
the winter he wrote the Sensitive Plant, prompted thereto, we 



88 SHELLEY. 

are told, by the flowers which crowded Mrs. Shelley's drawing- 
room, and exhaled their sweetness to the temperate Italian sun- 
light. Whether we consider the number of these poems or their 
diverse character, ranging from verse separated by an exquisitely 
subtle line from simple prose to the most impassioned eloquence 
and the most ethereal imagination, we shall be equally astonished. 
Every chord of the poet's lyre is touched, from the deep bass 
string that echoes the diurnal speech of such a man as Shelley was 
to the fine vibrations of a treble merging its rarity of tone in accents 
super-sensible to ordinary ears . One passage from the Letter to 
Maria Gisborne may here be quoted, not for its poetry, but for the 
light it casts upon the circle of his English friends. 

You are now 
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow 
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore 
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more, 
Yet in its depth what treasures ! You will see 
That which was Godwin, — greater none than he 
Though fallen — and fallen on evil times— to stand 
Among the spirits of our age and land, 
Before the dread tribunal of To come 
The foremost, while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. 
You will see Coleridge — he who sits obscure 
In the exceeding lustre and the pure 
Intense irradition of a mind, 
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, 
Flags wearily through darkness and despair — 
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, 
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. 
You will see Hunt; one of those happy souls 
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom 
This world would smell like what it is — a tomb ; 
Who is, what others seem. His room no doubt 
Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, 
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, 
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, 
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung ; 
The gifts of the most learn' d among some dozens 
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. 
And there is he with his eternal puns, 
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns 
Thundering for money at a poet's door ; 
Alas ! it is no use to say, " I'm poor ! " — 
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look 
Things wiser than were ever read in book, 
Except in Shakespere's wisest tenderness. 
You will see Hogg ; and I cannot express 
His virtues, though I know that they are great, 
Because he locks, then barricades the gate 
Within which they inhabit. Of his wit 
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. 
He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, 



SHELLEY. 89 

One of the richest of the deep. And there 

Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair,- 

Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird 

That gleams in the Indian air. Have you not heard 

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo. 

His best friends hear no more of him. But you 

Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, 

With the milk-white Snowdonian an+clope 

Match'd with this camelopard. tils fine wit 

Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it ; 

A strain too learned for a shallow age, 

Too wise for selfish bigots ; let his page 

Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, 

Fold itself up for the serener clime 

Of years to come, and find its recompense 

In that just expectation. Wit and sense, 

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might 

Make this dull world a business of delight, 

Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, 

With some exceptions, which I need not tease 

Your patience by descanting on, are all 

You and I know in London. 

Captain Medwin, who came late in the autumn of 1820, at his 
cousin's invitation, to stay with the Shelleys, has recorded many 
interesting details of their Pisan life, as well as valuable notes of 
Shelley's conversation. " It was nearly seven years since we had 
parted, but I should have immediately recognised him in a crowd. 
His figure was emaciated, and somewhat bent, owing to near-sight- 
edness, and his being forced to lean over his books, with his eyes 
almost touching them ; his hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, 
was partially interspersed with grey ; but his appearance was youth- 
ful. There was also a freshness and purity in his complexion that 
he never lost." Not long after his arrival, Medwin suffered from 
a severe and tedious illness. " Shelley tended me like a brother. 
He applied my leeches, administered my medicines, and during six 
weeks that I was confined to my room, was assiduous and uninter- 
mitting in his affectionate care of me." The poet's solitude and 
melancholy at this time impressed his cousin very painfully. Though 
he was producing a long series of imperishable poems, he did not 
take much interest in his work. " I am disgusted with writing," 
he once said, " and were it not for an irresistible impulse, that pre- 
dominates my better reason, should discontinue so doing." The 
brutal treatment he had lately received from the Quarterly Review, 
the calumnies which pursued him, and the coldness of all but a 
very few friends, checked his enthusiasm for composition. Of this 
there is abundant proof in his correspondence. In a letter to 
Leigh Hunt, dated Jan. 25, 1822, he says: "My faculties are shaken 
to atoms and torpid. I can write nothing ; and if Adonais had no 
success, and excited no interest, what incentive can I have to 
write ? " Again : " I write little now. It is impossible to compose 
except under the strong excitement of an assurance of finding synv 



9° 



SHELLEY. 



pathy in what you write." Lord Byron's company proved now, as 
before, a check rather than an incentive to production : " I do not 
write ; I have lived too long near Lord Byron, and the sun has ex- 
tinguished the glow-worm ; for I cannot hope, with St. John, that 
the light came i:* to the world and the world knew it not." "I 
despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other 
with whom it is worth- contending." To Oilier, in 1820, he wrote : 
11 I doubt whether I shall write more. I could be content either with 
the hell or the paradise of poetry ; but the torments of its purgatory 
vex me, without exciting my powers sufficiently to put an end to 
the vexation." It was not that his spirit was cowed by the Re- 
views, or that he mistook the sort of audience he had to address. 
He more than once acknowledged that, while Byron wrote for the 
many, his poems were intended for the understanding few. Yet 
the Goveroi, as he called them, gave him but scanty encouragement. 
The cold phrases of kindly Horace Smith show that he had not 
comprehended Prometheus Unbound; and Shelley whimsically 
complains that even intelligent and sympathetic critics confounded 
the ideal passion described in Epipsychidion with the love affairs 
of "a servant-girl and her sweetheart.' ' This almost incompre- 
hensible obtuseness on the part of men who ought to have known 
better, combined with the coarse abuse of vulgar scribblers, was 
enough to make a man so sincerely modest as Shelley doubt his 
powers, or shrink from the severe labour of developing them.* 
" The decision of the cause," he wrote to Mr. Gisborne, " whether 
or no /am a poet, is removed from the present time to the hour 
when our posterity shall assemble ; but the court is a very severe 
one, and I fear that the verdict will be, guilty — death.' ' Deep 
down in his own heart he had, however, less doubt : " This I 
know," he said to Medwin, " that whether in prosing or in versing, 
there is something in my writings that shall live for ever." And 
again he writes to Hunt : " I am full of thoughts and plans, and 
should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which en- 
closes it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should 
do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness 
of many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandon, 
ment of the tragedy on Tasso's story, the unfinished state of 
Charles /., and the failure to execute the cherished plan of a drama 
suggested by the Book of Job, were due to the depressing effects 
of ill-health and external discouragement. Poetry with Shelley 
was no light matter. He composed under the pressure of intense 
excitement, and he elaborated his first draughts with minute care 
and severe self-criticism. 

These words must not be taken as implying that he followed 
the Virgilian precedent of polishing and reducing the volume of 
his verses by an anxious exercise of calm reflection, or that he 
observed the Horatian maxim of deferring their publication till the 
ninth year. The contrary was notoriously the case with him. Yet 

* See Medwin, vol. ii. p. 172. for Selley's comment on the difficulty of the poet's 
art 



I SHELLEY, 9I 

it is none the less proved by the state of his manuscripts that his 
compositions, even as we now possess them, were no mere improv- 
isations. The passage already quoted from his Defence of Poetry 
shows the high ideal he had conceived of th- poet's duty toward 
his art ; and it may be confidently asserted that his whole literary 
career was one long struggle to emerge from the incoherence of 
his earlier efforts, into the clearness of expression and precision of 
form that are the index of mastery over style. At the same time it 
was inconsistent with his most firmly rooted aesthetic principles to 
attempt composition except under an impulse approaching to in- 
spiration. To imperil his life by the fiery taxing of all his faculties, 
moral, intellectual, and physical, and to undergo the discipline ex- 
acted by his own fastidious taste, with no other object in view 
than the frigid compliments of a few friends, was more than even 
Shelley's enthusiasm could endure. He, therefore, at this period 
required the powerful stimulus of some highly exciting cause from 
without to determine his activity. 

Such external stimulus came to Shelley from three quarters 
early in the year 1821. Among his Italian acquaintances at Pisa 
was a clever but disreputable Professor, of whom Medwin draws a 
very piquant portrait. This man one day related the sad story of 
a beautiful and noble lady, the Contessina Emilia Viviani, who had 
been confined by her father in a dismal convent of the suburbs, to 
await her marriage with a distasteful husband. Shelley, fired as 
ever by a tale of tryanny, was eager to visit the fair captive. The 
Professor accompanied him and Medwin to the convent-parlour, 
where they found her more lovely than even the most glowing de- 
scriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. 
Shelley soon discovered that she had u cultivated her mind beyond 
what I have ever met with in Italian women ;" and a rhapsody 
composed by her upon the subject of Uranian Love — II Vero 
Amore — justifies the belief that she possessed an intellect of more 
than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. Shelley to see her, and 
both did all they could to make her convent-prison less irksome, by 
frequent visits, by letters, and by presents of flowers and books. 
It was not long before Shelley's sympathy for this unfortunate lady 
took the form of love, which, however spiritual and Platonic, was 
not the less passionate. The result was the composition of Epi- 
psychidion, the most unintelligible of all his poems to those who 
have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's Symposiu?n and Dante's 
Vita Nuova. In it he apostrophises Emilia Viviani as the incar- 
nation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in 
mortal flesh : — 

Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, 
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman 
All that is insupportable in thee 
Of light, and love, and immortality ! 

He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and 
deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in de* 



92 SHELLEY. 

liberate obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite 
have striven for his soul ; for though in youth he dedicated himself 
to the service Ci ideal beauty, and seemed to find it under many 
earthly shapes, yet has he ever ireen deluded. At last Emily 
appears, and in her he recognises the truth of the vision veiled 
from him so many years. She and Mary shall henceforth, like sun 
and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then he calls on 
her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far away from 
men, in an ^Egean island. The description of this visionary isle, 
and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and un- 
discerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this 
century in the rhymed heroic metre. 

It is an isle under Ionian skies, 

Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise ; 

And, for the harbours are not safe and good, 

This land would have remained a solitude 

But for some pastoral people native there, 

Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air 

Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 

Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. 

The blue iEgean girds this chosen home, 

With ever-changing sound and light and foam 

Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar ; 

And all the winds wandering along the shore, 

Undulate with the undulating tide. 

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ; 

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 

As clear as elemental diamond, 

Or serene morning air. And far beyond, 

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer, 

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,) 

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 

Built round with ivy, vthichthe waterfalls, 

Illumining, with sound that never fails 

Accompany the noonday nightingales ; 

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. 

The light clear element which the isle wears 

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, 

Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, 

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep ; 

And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 

And dart their arrowy odour through the brain, 

Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 

And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, 

With that deep music is in unison : 

Which is a soul within a soul — they seem 

Like echoes of an antenatal dream. 

It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea 

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ; 

Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, 

Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. 

It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, 

Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light 



SHELLEY. 93 

Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they 

Sail onward far upon their fatal way. 

The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm 

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm 

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, 

From which its fields and woods ever renew 

Their green and golden immortality. 

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, 

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, 

Which sun or moon or zephyr draws aside, 

Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride 

Glowing at once with love and loveliness, 

Blushes and trembles at its own excess : 

Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less 

Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, 

An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile 

Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen 

O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, 

Filling their bare and void interstices. 

Shelley did not publish Epipsychidion with his own name. He 
gave it to the world as the composition of a man who had " died 
at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the Spor- 
ades," and he requested Oilier not to circulate it, except among a 
few intelligent readers. It may almost be said to have been never 
published, in such profound silence did it issue from the press. 
Very shortly after its appearance he described it to Leigh Hunt as 
" a portion of me already dead," and added this significant allusion 
to its subject matter : — " Some of us have in a prior existence been 
in love with an Antigone, and that makes us find no full content in 
any mortal tie." In the letter of June 18, 1822, again he says : — 
u The Epipsychidion I cannot look at ; the person whom it cele- 
brates was a cloud instead of a Juno ; and poor Ixion starts from 
the Centaur that was the offspring of his own embrace. If you are 
curious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you 
something thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. 
I think one is always in love with something or other ; the error, and 
I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid 
it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, per- 
haps, eternal." This paragraph contains the essence of a just 
criticism. Brilliant as the poem is, we cannot read it with unwaver- 
ing belief either in the author's sincerity at the time he wrote it, or 
in the permanence of the emotion it describes. The exordium has 
a fatal note of rhetorical exaggeration, not because the kind of 
passion is impossible, but because Shelley does not convince us 
that in this instance he had really been its subject. His own 
critique, following so close upon the publication of Epipsychidion, 
confirms the impression made by it, and justifies the conclusion that 
he had utilised his feeling for Emilia to express a favourite doctrine 
in impassioned verse. 
i To students of Shelley's inner life Epipsychidion will always 



94 SHELLEY. 

have high value, independently of its beauty of style, as containing 
his doctrine of love. It is the full expression of the esoteric principle 
presented to us in Alastor, the Hyjnn to Intellectual Beauty, and 
Prince Athanase. But the words just quoted, which may be com- 
pared with Mrs. Shelley's note to Prince Athanase, authorise our 
pointing out what he himself recognised as the defect of his theory. 
Instead of remaining true to the conception of Beauty expressed 
in the Hymn, Shelley " sought through the world the One whom 
he may love." Thus, while his doctrine in Epcpsychidion seems 
Platonic, it will not square with the Symposium. Plato treats the 
love of a beautiful person as a mere initiation into divine mysteries, 
the first step in the ladder that ascends to heaven. When a man 
has formed a just conception to the universal beauty, he looks back 
with a smile upon those who find their souPs sphere in the love of 
some mere mortal object. Tested by this standard, Shelley's 
identification of Intellectual Beauty with so many daughters of 
earth, and his worshipping love of Emilia, is a spurious Platonism. 
Plato would have said that to seek the Idea of Beauty in Emilia 
Viviani was a retrogressive step. All that she could do, would be 
to quicken the soul's sense of beauty, to stir it from its lethargy, 
and to make it divine the eternal reality of beauty in the super- 
sensual world of thought. This Shelley had already acknowledged 
in the Hymn; and this he emphasises in these words : — " The error 
consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, per- 
haps, eternal." 

The fragments and cancelled passages published in Forman's 
edition do not throw much light upon Epipsychidiotu The long- 
est, entitled To his Genius by its first editor, Mr. Garnett, reads 
like the induction to a poem conceived and written in a different 
key, and at a lower level of inspiration. It has, however, this ex? 
traordinary interest, that it deals with a love which is both love and 
friendship, above sex, spiritual, unintelligible to the world at large. 
Thus the fragment enables the student better to realise the kind of 
worship so passionately expressed in Epipsychidion. 

The news of Keats's death at Rome on the 27th of December, 
1820, and the erroneous belief that it had been accelerated, if not 
caused, by a contemptible review of Endymio?i in the Quarterly, 
stirred Shelley to the composition of Adonais. He had it printed 
at Pisa, and sent copies to Oilier for circulation in London. This 
poem was a favourite with its author, who hoped not only that it 
might find acceptance with the public, but also that it would confer 
lustre upon the memory of a poet whom he sincerely admired. No 
criticisms upon Shelley's works are half so good as his own. It is, 
therefore, interesting to collect the passages in which he speaks of 
an elegy only equalled in our language by Lycidas, and in the point 
of passionate eloquence even superior to Milton's youthful lament 
for his friend. " The Adonais, in spite of its mysticism," he writes 
to Oilier, " is the least imperfect of my compositions. " " I confess 
I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of 
oblivion. " " It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better^ 



SHELLEY. 95 

in point of composition, than anything I have written." " It is 
absurd in any review to criticise Adonais, and still more to pretend 
that the verses are bad." " I know what to think of Adonais, but 
what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems 
of the day, I know not." Again, alluding to the stanzas hurled 
against the infamous Quarterly reviewer, he says : — " I have dipped 
my pen in consuming fire for his destroyers ; otherwise the style is 
calm and solemn." 

With these estimates the reader of to-day will cordially agree. 
Although Adonais is not so utterly beyond the scope of other poets 
as Prometheus ox Epipsychidion, it presents Shelley's qualities in 
a form of even and sustained beauty, brought within the sphere of 
the dullest apprehensions. Shelley, we may notice, dwells upon 
the art of the poem ; and this, perhaps, is what at first sight will 
strike the student most. He chose as a foundation for his work 
those laments of Bion for Adonis, and of Moschus for Bion, which 
are the most pathetic products of Greek idyllic peotry ; and the 
transmutation of their material into the substance of highly spirit- 
ualized modern thought, reveals the potency of a Prospero's wand. 
It is a metamorphosis whereby the art of excellent but positive 
poets has been translated into the sphere of metaphysical imagina- 
tion. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite; the thoughts and fan- 
cies and desires of the dead singer are substituted for Bion's cupids ; 
and instead of mountain shepherds, the living bards of England are 
summoned to lament around the poet's bier. Yet it is only when 
Shelley frees himself from the influence of his models, that he soars 
aloft on mighty wing. This point, too, is the point of transition 
from death, sorrow, and the past to immortality, joy, and the rapture 
of the things that cannot pass away. The first and second portions 
of the poem are, at the same time, thoroughly concordant, and the 
passage from the one to the other is natural. Two quotations from 
Adonais will suffice to show the power and sweetness of its verse. 

The first is a description of Shelley himself following Byron 
and Moore — the " Pilgrim of Eternity," and Ierne's " sweetest 
lyrist of her saddest wrong " — to the couch whe *e Keats lies dead. 
There is both pathos and unconscious irony in his making these 
two poets the chief mourners, when we remember what Byron 
wrote about Keats in Don Juan, and what Moore afterwards re- 
corded of Shelley; and when we think, moreover, how far both 
Keats and Shelley have outsoared Moore, and disputed with Byron 
his supreme place in the heaven of poetry. 

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
A phantom among men, companionless 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm, 
Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness. 
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. 



g6 SHELLEY. 

A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 
A love in desolation masked — a Power 
Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
Is it a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak 
Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 

His head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
And faded violets, white and pied and blue ; 
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew 
Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, 
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart. 

The second passage is the peroration of the poem. Nowhere 
has Shelley expressed his philosophy of man's relation to the uni- 
verse with more sublimity and with a more imperial command of 
language than in these stanzas. If it were possible to identify 
that philosophy with any recognised system of thought, it might 
be called pantheism. But it is difficult to affix a name, stereotyped 
by the usage of the schools, to the aerial spiritualism of its ardent 
and impassioned poet's creed. 

The movement of the long melodious sorrow-song has just 
been interrupted by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the re- 
viewer of Keats. He now bursts forth afresh into the music of 
consolation : — 

Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep ! 
He hath awakened from the dream of life. 
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 
Invulnerable nothings. We decay 
Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
Convulse us and consume us day by day, 
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 

He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
Mourn not for A-donais. — Thou young Dawn, 



SHELLEY. 97 

Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to mourn ! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair I 

He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own; 
Which wields the world with never wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

He is a portion of the loveliness 
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear 
His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress 
Sweeps through the dull' dense world, compelling there 
All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's -light. 

But the absorption of the human soul into primeval nature* 
forces, the blending of the principle of thought with the universal 
spirit of beauty, is not enough to satisfy man's yearning after im- 
mortality. Therefore in the next three stanzas the indestructibility 
of the personal self is presented to us, as the soul of Adonais 
passes into the company of the illustrious dead who, like him, 
were untimely slain : — 

The splendours of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not : 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
And love and life contend in it, for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, 
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, 
Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved : 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved 

7 



9 8 SHELLEY. 

And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, 
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
" Thou art become as one of us," they cry ; 
" It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. 
Assume th y winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! " 

From the more universal and philosophical aspects of his 
theme, the poet once more turns to the special subject that had 
stirred him. Adonais lies dead ; and those who mourn him must 
seek his grave. He has escaped : to follow him is to die ; and 
%there should we learn to dote on death unterrified, if not in Rome ? 
In this way the description of Keats 's resting-place beneath the 
pyramid of Cestius, which was also destined to be Shelley's own, 
is introduced : — 

Who mourns for Adonais ? oh come forth, 
Fond wretch ! and show thyself and h;m aright. 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 
Even to a point within our day and night ; 
And keep thy heart light, let it make thee sin 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink 

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, 
Oh, not of him, but of our joy : 'tis nought 
That ages, empires, and religions there 
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 
For such as he can lend, — they borrow not 
Glory from those who made the world their prey ; 
And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; 
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise 
And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress 
The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass in spread ; 

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 

Feeds, like slow lire upon a hoary brand; 

And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 

Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 

This refuge for his memory, doth stand 

Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 



SHELLEY. 99 

A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath* 

Here pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
Its charge to each ; and if the seal is set, 
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind. 
Break if not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? 

Yet again the thought of Death as the deliverer, the revealer, 
and the mystagogue, through whom the soul of man is reunited-to 
the spirit of the universe, returns ; and on this solemn note the 
poem closes. The symphony of exultation which had greeted the 
passage of Adonais into the eternal world, is here subdued to a 
graver key, as befits the mood of one whom mystery and mourn- 
ing still oppress on earth. Yet even in the somewhat less than 
jubilant conclusion we feel that highest of Shelley's qualities — the 
liberation of incalculable energies, the emancipation and expansion 
of force within the soul, victorious over circumstance, exhilarated 
and elevated by contact with such hopes as make a feebler spirit 
tremble : 

The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly 
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! 
Follow where all is fled ! — Rome's azure sky, 
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? 
Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 
They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart ! 
A light is past from the revolving year, 
And man and woman ; and what still is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near : 
'Tis Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither ! 
No more let life divide what Death can join together 

That light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
That beauty in which all things work and move, 
That benediction which the eclipsing curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 



IO o SHELLEY. 

The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given. 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar ; 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 

It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time 
have said about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, 
and no believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death. 
Yet he was too wise to dogmatise upon a problem which by its very 
nature admits of no solution in this world. "I hope," he said, "but 
my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befall this in- 
estimable spirit when we appear to die." On another occasion he 
told Trelawny, " I am content to see no farther into futurity than 
Plato and Bacon. My mind is tranquil ; I have no fears and some 
hopes. In our present gross material state our faculties are 
clouded ; when Death removes our clay coverings, the mystery will 
be solved." How constantly the thought of death as the revealer 
was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related 
by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who 
could not swim, plunged into deep water, and " lay stretched out at 
the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle 
to save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken 
breath, he said : " I always find the bottom of the well, and they 
say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, 
and you would have found an empty shell. Death is the veil which 
those who live call life ; they sleep, and it is lifted." Yet being 
pressed by his friend, he refused to acknowledge a formal and pre- 
cise belief in the imperishability of the human soul. " We know 
nothing ; we have no evidence ; we cannot express our inmost 
thoughts. They are incomprehensible events to ourselves." The 
clear insight into the conditions of the question conveyed by the 
last sentence is very characteristic of Shelley. It makes us regret 
the non-completion of his essay on a Future Life, which would 
certainly have stated the problem with rare lucidity and candour, 
and would have illuminated the abyss of doubt with a sense of 
spiritual realities not often found in combination with wise suspen- 
sion of judgment. What he clung to amid all perplexities was the 
absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as perceived 
by us in love, beauty, and delight. Though the destiny of the per- 
sonal self be obscure, these things cannot fail. The conclusion of 
the Sensitive Plant might be cited as conveying the quintessence 
of his hope upon this most intangible of riddles. 

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 



SHELLEY. ioi 

I dare not guess ; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife, 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream : 

It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant, if one considers it, 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like al] the rest, a mockery. 

That garden sweet, the lady fair, 

And all sweet shades and odours there, 

In truth have never passed away : 

'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they. 

For love, and beauty, and delight, 
There is no death nor change ; their might 
Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 

But it is now time to return from this digression to the poem 
which suggested it, and which, more than any other, serves to illus- 
trate its author's mood of feeling about the life beyond the grave. 
The last lines of Adonais might be read as a prophecy of his death 
by drowning. The frequent recurrence of this thought in his poetry 
is, to say the least, singular. In Alastor we read : — 

A restless impulse urged him to embark 
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 
For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves 
The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 

The Ode to Liberty closes on the same note : — 

As a far taper fades with fading night ; 
As a brief insect dies with dying day, 
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 

Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away 
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, 
As waves which lately paved his watery way 
Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. 

The Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples, echo the thought 
with a slight variation : — 

Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 
I could lie downilike a tired child, 

And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne, and yet must bear, — - 

Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
And I might feel in the warm air 

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 



IQ 2 SHELLEY. 

Trelawny tells a story of his friend's lffe at Lerici, which further 
illustrates his preoccupation with the thought of death at sea. He 
took Mrs Williams and her children out upon the bay in his little 
boat one afternoon, and starting suddenly from a deep reverie, into 
which he had fallen, exclaimed with a joyful and resolute voice, a 
Now let us together solve the great mystery ! " Too much value 
must not be attached to what might have been a mere caprice of 
utterance. Yet the proposal not unreasonably frightened Mrs. 
Williams, for Shelley's friends were accustomed to expect the real- 
isation of his wildest fancies. It may incidentally be mentioned 
that before the water finally claimed its victim, he had often been 
in peril of life upon his fatal element — during the first voyage to 
Ireland, while crossing the Channel with Mary in an open boat, 
again at Meillerie with Byron, and once at least with Williams. 

A third composition of the year 1821 was inspired b}' the visit 
of Prince Mavrocordato to Pisa. He called on Shelley in April, 
showed him a copy of Prince Ipsilanti's proclamation, and an- 
nounced that Greece was determined to strike a blow for freedom. 
The news aroused all Shelley's enthusiasm, and he began the 
lyrical drama of Hellas, which he has described as w a sort of im- 
itation of the Persae of yEschylus." We find him at work upon it 
in October ; and it must have been finished by the end of that month, 
since the dedication bears the date of November 1st, 1821. Shel- 
ley did not set great store by it. " It was written," he says, 
" without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm 
which now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their 
visits." The preface might, if space permitted, be cited as a speci- 
men of his sound and weighty judgment upon one of the greatest 
political questions of this century. What he says about the debt of 
the modern world to ancient Hellas, is no less pregnant than his 
severe strictures upon the part played by Russia in dealing with East- 
ern questions. For the rest, the poem is distinguished by passages 
of great lyrical beauty, rising at times to the sublimest raptures, 
and closing on the half-pathetic cadence of that well-known 
Chorus, " The world's great age begins anew.'' Of dramatic in- 
terest it has but little ; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the 
promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called Pro- 
logue.* This truly magnificent torso must, I think, have been 
the commencement of the drama as conceived upon a different 
and more colossal plan which Shelley rejected for some unknown 
reason. It shows the influence not only of the Book of Job. but 
also of the Prologue in Heaven to Faust, upon his mind. 

The lyric movement of the Chorus from Hellas, which I pro- 
pose to quote, marks the highest point of Shelley's rhythmical 
invention. As for the matter expressed in it, we must not forget 
that these stanzas are written for a Chorus of Greek captive women, 
whose creed does not prevent their feeling a regret for the 
''mightier forms of an older, austerer worship." Shelley's note 

* Forman, iv. p. 95. 



SHELLEY. 1Q - 

reminds the reader, with characteristic caution and frankness, 
that "the popular notions of Christianity are represented in this 
Chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, 
and that which in all probability they will supersede, without con- 
sidering their merits in a relation more universal." 

Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 

From creation to decay, 
Like the bubbles on a river 

Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 

But they are still immortal 

Who, through birth's orient portal, 
And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 

Clothe their unceasing flight 

In the brief dust and light 
Gathered around their chariots as they go ; 

New shapes they still may weave, 

New gods, new laws receive ; 
Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last 
On Death's bare ribs had cast. 

A power from the unknown God, 

A Promethean conqueror came ; 
Like a triumphal path he trod 
The thorns of death and shame. 
A mortal shape to him 
Was like the vapor dim 
Which the orient planet animates with light. 
Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, 
Like bloodhounds mild and tame, 
Nor preyed until their Lord had taken flight. 
The Moon of Mahomet 
Arose, and it shall set : 
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon 
The cross leads generations on. 

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep 

From one whose dreams are paradise, 
Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 
And day peers forth with her blank eyes ; 
So fleet, so faint, so fair, 
The Powers of earth and air 
Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem : 
Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
And even Olympian Jove, 
Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. 
Our hills, and seas, and streams, 
Dispeopled of their dreams, 
Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, 
Wailed for the golden years. 

In the autumn of this year Shelley paid Lord Byron a visit at 
Ravenna, where he made acquaintance with the Countess Guiccioli. 
It was then settled that Byron, who had formed the project of 



I0 4 SHELLEY. 

starting a journal to be called The Liberal in concert with Leigh 
Hunt, should himself settle in Pisa. Leigh Hunt was to join his 
brother poets in the same place. The prospect gave Shelley great 
pleasure, for he was sincerely attached to Hunt ; and though he 
would not promise contributions to the journal, partly lest his 
name should bring discredit on it, and partly because he did not 
choose to appear before the world as a hanger-on of Byron's, he 
thoroughly approved of a plan which would be profitable to his 
friend by bringing him into close relation with the most famous 
poet of the age.* That he was not without doubts as to Byron's 
working easily in harness with Leigh Hunt, may be seen in his 
correspondence ; and how fully these doubts were destined to be 
confirmed, is only too well known. 

At Ravenna he was tormented by the report of some more than 
usually infamous calumny. What it was, we do not know ; but 
that it made profound impression on his mind, appears from a 
remarkable letter addressed to his wife on the 1 6th and 17th of 
August from Ravenna. In it he repeats his growing weariness, 
and his wish to escape from society to solitude ; the weariness of 
a nature wounded and disappointed by commerce with the world, 
but neither soured nor driven to fury by cruel wrongs. It is 
noticeable at the same time that he clings to his present place of 
residence : — " our roots never struck so deeply as at Pisa, and 
the transplanted tree flourishes not." At Pisa lie had found real 
rest and refreshment in the society of his two friends, the Wil- 
liamses. Some of his saddest and most touching lyrics of this 
year are addressed to Jane — for so Mrs. Williams was called ; and 
attentive students may perceive that the thought of Emilia was al- 
ready blending by subtle transitions with the new thought of Jane. 
One poem, almost terrible in its intensity of melancholy, is hardly 
explicable on the supposition that Shelley was quite happy in his 
home.f These words must be taken as implying no reflection 
either upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear 
the slighter troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child 
of fortune, a weak egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was 
always seeking and never finding the satisfaction of some deeper 
craving. In his own words, he had loved Antigone before he 
visited this earth : and no one woman could probably have made 
him happy, because he was for ever demanding more from love 
than it can give in the mixed circumstances of mortal life. More- 
over, it must be remembered that his power of self-expression 
has bestowed permanent form on feelings which may have been 
but transitory ; nor can we avoid the conclusion that, sincere as 
Shelley was, he, like all poets, made use of the emotion of the 
moment for purposes of art, converting an ephemeral mood into 
something typical and universal. This was almost certainly the 
case with Epipsychidio?i. 

See the Letter to Leigh Hunt, Pisa, Aug. 26, 1821. 
t " The Serpent is shut out from paradise." 



SHELLEY, I05 

So much at any rate had to be said upon this subject ; for care- 
ful readers of Shelley's minor poems are forced to the conviction 
that during the last year of his life he often found relief from a 
wretchedness, which, however real, can hardly be defined, in the 
sympathy of this true-hearted woman. The affection he felt for 
Jane was beyond question pure and honourable. All the verses 
he addressed to her passed through her husband's hands without 
the slightest interruption to their intercourse ; and Mrs. Shelley, 
who was not unpardonably jealous of her Ariel, continued to be 
Mrs. Williams's warm friend. A passage from Shelley's letter of 
June 1 8, 1822, expresses the plain prose of his relation to the 
Williamses : — " They are people who are very pleasing to me. 
But words are not the instruments of our intercourse. I like Jane 
more and more, and I find Williams the most amiable of compan- 
ions. She has a taste for music, and an eloquence of form and 
motions that compensate in some degree for the lack of literary 
refinement." 

Two lyrics of this period may here be introduced, partly for the 
sake of their intrinsic beauty, and partly because they illustrate 
the fecundity of Shelley's genius during the months of tranquil in- 
dustry which he passed at Pisa. The first is an invocation to 
Night :— 

Swiftly walk over the western wave, 
Spirit of Night ! 

Out of the misty eastern cave, 

Where all the long and lone daylight, 

Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 

Which make thee terrible and dear, — 
Swift be thy flight ! 

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 
Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, 
Kiss her until she be wearied out. 
Than wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 
Come, long-sought • 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 
And the weary Day turned to his rest, 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 

I sighed for thee. 

Thy brother Death came, and cried, 

"Wouldstthoume?" 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 
Murmured like a noon-tide bee, 
" Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
Wouldst thou me ? " — And I replied, 
" No, not thee ! " 



I0 6 SHELLEY. 

Death will come when thou art dead, 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled ; 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 

Come soon, soon ! 

The second is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which 
his friend Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will 
rind it not uninteresting to compare the three versions of this 
Bridal Song, given by Mr. Forman.* They prove that Shelley 
was no careless writer. 

The golden gates of sleep unbar 

Where strength and beauty, met together, 

Kindle their image like a star 
In a sea of glassy weather I 

Night, with all thy stars look down — 

Darkness, weep thy holiest dew I 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 

On a pair so true. 
Let eyes not see their own delight; 
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight 

Oft renew. 

Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her I 

Holy stars, permit no wrong! 
And return to wake the sleeper, 

Dawn, ere it be long. 
O joy ! O fear ! what will be done 

In the absence of the sun! 
Come along ! 

Lyrics like these, delicate in thought and exquisitely finished in 
form, were produced with a truly wonderful profusion in this sea- 
son of his happiest fertility. A glance at the last section of Mr, 
Palgrave's Golden Treasury shows how large a place they occupy 
among the permanent jewels of our literature. 

The month of January added a new and most important mem- 
ber to the little Pisan circle. This was Captain Edward John Tre- 
lawny to whom more than to any one else but Hogg and Mrs. Shel- 
ley, the students of the poet's life are indebted for details at once 
accurate and characteristic. Trelawny had lived a free life in all 
quarters of the globe, far away from literary cliques and the society 
of cities, in contact with the sternest realities of existence, which 
had developed his selfreliance and his physical qualities to the ut- 
most. The impression, therefore, made on him by Shelley has to 
be gravely estimated by all who still incline to treat the poet as a 
pathological specimen of humanity. This true child of nature rec- 

* Vol. iv. p. 89. 



SHELLEY. 



107 



ognised in his new friend far more than in Byron the stuff of a 
real man. " To form a just idea of his poetry, you should have 
witnessed his daily life ; his words and actions best illustrated his 
writings." " The cynic Byron acknowledged him to be the best 
and ablest man he had ever known. The truth was, Shelley loved 
everything better than himself." " I have seen Shelley and Byron 
in society, and the contrast was as marked as their characters. 
The former, not thinking of himself, was as much at ease as in his 
own home, omitting no occasion of obliging those whom he came 
in contact with, readily conversing with all or any who addressed 
him, irrespective of age or rank, dress or address." " All who 
heard him felt the charm of his simple, earnest manner : while Byron 
knew him to be exempt from the egotism, pedantry, coxcombry, 
and more than all the rivalry of authorship." " Shelley's mental 
activity was infectious; he kept your brain in constant action. " 
" He was always in earnest^' " He never laid aside his book and 
magic mantle ; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show 
of defiance, stood mute Shelley's earnestness and just criti- 
cism held him captive." These sentences, and many others, prove 
that Trelawny, himself somewhat of a cynic, cruelly exposing false 
pretensions, and detesting affectation in any form, paid unreserved 
homage to the heroic qualities of this " dreamy bard," — uncom- 
monly awkward," as he also called him — bad rider and poor seaman 
as he was — " over-sensitive," and " eternally brooding on his own 
thoughts," who " had seen no more of the waking-day than a girl 
at a boarding-school." True to himself, gentle, tender, with the 
courage of a lion, " frank and outspoken, like a well-conditioned 
boy, well-bred and considerate for others, because he was totally 
devoid of selfishness and vanity," Shelley seemed to this unprej- 
udiced companion of his last few months that very rare product 
ior which Dogenes searched in vain — a man. 

Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words — 
words no less certain of immortality than the fame of him they 
celebrate. " The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordi- 
al manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and 
were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put 
out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to 
where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine ; it was 
too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness 
of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the direction of mine, 
and going to the doorway she laughingly said, ' Come in, Shelley, it's 
only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in, blushing like 
a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands ; and although I 
could hardly believe, as 1 looked at his flushed, feminine, and art- 
less face, thatit could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. 
After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and lis- 
tened. I was silent from astonishment; was it possible this mild- 
looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with 
all the world ?-—excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, 
deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, 



_ 



I0 8 SHELLEY. 

discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the 
rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school ? I 
could not believe ; it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy 
in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, 
or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in 
his ' sizings.' Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment, and to re- 
lieve me asked Shelley what book he had in his hand ? His face 
brightened, and he answered briskly, — 

u ' Calderon's Magico Prodigioso — I am translating some 
passages in it.' 

" « Oh, read it to us.' 

" Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could 
not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he in- 
stantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. 
The masterly manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, 
his lucid interpretation of the story, and the case with which he 
translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative pas- 
sages of the Spanish poet, were marvellous, as was his command 
of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer 
doubted his identity; a dead silence ensued ; looking up, I asked, — 

" < Where is he ? ' 

"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and 
goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.' " 

Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1 821-2 
deserve to be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in 
December that a man who had insulted the Host at Lucca was 
sentenced to be burned. Shelley proposed that the English — him- 
self, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr. Taafe — should immedi- 
ately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme took Byron's 
fancy ; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before they 
had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing 
that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The 
other affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tus- 
can police. The party were riding home one afternoon in March, 
when a mounted dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks 
and nearly unhorsing Mr. Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after 
him to remonstrate ; but the man struck Shelley from his saddle 
with a sabre blow. The English then pursued him into Pisa, mak- 
ing such a clatter that one of Byron's servants issued with a pitch- 
fork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded the fellow somewhat 
seriously, under the impression that it was necessary to defend his 
master. Shelley called the whole matter " a trifling piece of busi- 
ness ; " but it was strictly investigated by the authorities ; and 
though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong, Byron 
had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was 
the exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led 
to Byron's final departure from Pisa. 

The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such 
adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed 
his days : he " was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or 



SHELLEY. 



109 



Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread ; then he 
joined Williams in a sail on the Arno. in a flat-bottomed skiff, book 
in hand, and from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out- 
of-the-way place. When the birds went to roost he returned home, 
and talked and read until midnight. The great wood of stone 
pines on the Pisan Maremma was his favourite study. Trelawny 
tells us how he found him there alone one day, and in what state was 
the MS. of that prettiest lyric, Ariel, to Miranda take. " It was a 
frightful scrawl ; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the 
other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most ' admired 
disorder; ' it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh over- 
grown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks ; such adashed- 
off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifestation of 
genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, ' When my- 
brain gets heated with thought, it sfoon boils, and throws off images 
and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when 
cooled down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall 
attempt a drawing." 

A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked 
more sensibly with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaint- 
ance ; and when he began to gossip, Shelley retired into his own 
thoughts. Then they would go pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling 
hand contrasting with his friend's firmness. They had invented a 
" little language " for this sport : firing was called tiring j hitting, 
colping; missing, mancating, &c. It was in fact a kind of pigeon 
Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the circle of his Pisan 
friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and the Snake. 
The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding movement, 
bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by Byron 
during a reading of Faust. When he came to the line of Meph- 
istopheles, " Wie meine Muhme, die beriihmte Schlange," and 
translated it, " My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, " Then 
you are her nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. 
Indeed he alludes to it in his letters, and in a poem already referred 
to above. 

Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to 
nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating 
with Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occa- 
sion nearly lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They 
now determined to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea ; 
while Byron, liking the project of a summer residence upon the Bay 
of Spezia, made up his mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be 
an open boat carrying sail, Byron's a large decked schooner. The 
construction of both was entrusted to a Genoese builder, under the 
direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain Roberts. Such was the 
birth of the ill-fated Don Juan, which cost the lives of Shelley and 
Williams, and of the Bolivar, which carried Byron off to Genoa 
before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain Roberts was allowed 
to have his own way about the latter ; but Shelley and Williams had 
set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht, which did not 



no 



SHELLEY. 



suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams overruled 
his objections,and the Don Juan was built according to his cherished 
fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, " it took two tons 
of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was 
very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was 
fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by 
Lord Byron, not wholly with Shelley's approval ; and one young 
English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, 
formed her crew. " It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness 
Williams teaching the poet how to steer, and other points of seaman- 
ship. As usual, Shelley had a book in hand, saying he could read 
and steer at the same time, as one was mental, the other mechanical." 
" The boy was quick and handy, and used to boats. Williams was 
not deficient as I anticipated, but over-anxious, and wanted practice, 
which alone makes a man prompt in emergency. Shelley was intent 
on catching images from the ever-changing sea and sky ; he heeded 
not the boat." 



SHELLEY. m 



CHAPTER VII. 

LAST DAYS. 

The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for 
comfort ; and early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find 
a suitable lodging for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of 
Spezia. They pitched upon a house called the Villa Magni, between 
Lerici and San Terenzio, which "looked more like a boat or bathing- 
house than a place to live in. It consisted of a terrace or ground- 
floor unpaved, and used for storing boat -gear and fishing-tackle, and 
of a single storey over it, divided into a hall or saloon and four 
small rooms, which had once been white-washed ; there was one 
chimney for cooking. This place we thought the Shelleys might 
put up with for the summer. The only good thing about it was a 
verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to be 
inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room 
of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each 
other ; the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and 
Trelawny another. Access to these smaller apartments could only 
be got through the saloon ; and this circumstance once gave rise 
to a ludicrous incident, when Shelley, having lost his clothes out 
bathing, had to cross, infturis naturalibus, not undetected, though 
covered in his retreat by the clever Italian handmaiden, through a 
luncheon party assembled in the dining-room. The horror of the 
ladies at the poet's unexpected apparition and his innocent self- 
defence are well described by Trelawny. Life in the villa was of 
the simplest description. To get food was no easy matter ; and 
the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's laconic 
remark that the sea was his only washing-basin. 

They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a 
course of life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of 
July 8. These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shel- 
ley's life. We seem to discern in his last letter of importance, 
recently edited by Mr. Garnett, that he was now conscious of having 
reached a platform from which he could survey his past achievement, 
and whence he would probably have risen to a loftier altitude, by a 
calmer and more equable exercise of powers which had been ripen- 
ing the last three years of life in Italy. Meanw r hile, " I am content," 
he writes, " if the heaven above me is calm for the passing moment/ 



H2 SHELLEY. 

And this tranquillity was perfect, with none of the oppressive sense 
of coming danger, which distinguishes the calm before a storm. 
He was far away from the distractions of the world he hated, in a 
scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little removed 
from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures of a 
race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the 
element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial 
and well mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water 
with Williams, or in solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, float- 
ing upon the shallows in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for 
the landward breeze to bring him home. The evenings were passed 
upon the terrace, listening to Jane's guitar, conversing with Tre- 
lawny, or reading his favourite poets aloud to the assembled party. 

In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, 
this uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms 
and inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a 
poem, which, if we may judge of its scale by the fragment we pos- 
sess, would have been one of the longest, as it certainly is one of 
the loftiest of his masterpieces. The Triumph of Life is com- 
posed in no strain of compliment to the powers of this world, which 
quell untameable spirits, and enslave the noblest by the operation 
of blind passions and inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant 
of the spirit dragged in chains, led captive to the world, the flesh, 
and the devil. The sonorous march and sultry splendour of the 
terza rima stanzas, bearing on their tide of song those multitudes 
of forms, processionally grand, yet misty with the dust of their 
own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe of light, affect 
the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to abandon criticism 
and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this solemn 
mystery. Some have compared the Triumph of Life to a Pana- 
thenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the^ burning 
summer heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of intermin- 
able waves, which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The 
imagery of Dante plays a part, and Dante has controlled the struc- 
ture. The genius of the Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, 
and Rousseau serves for guide. The great of all ages are arraigned, 
and the spirit of the world is brought before us, while its heroes 
pass, unveil their faces for a moment, and are swallowed in the 
throng that has no ending. But how Shelley meant to solve the 
problems he has raised, by what sublime philosophy he purposed 
to resolve the discords of this revelation more soul-shattering than 
Daniel's Mene, we cannot even guess. The poem, as we have it, 
breaks abruptly with these words : " Then what is Life ? I cried " 
— a sentence of profoundest import, when we remember that the 
questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death. 

To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so 
much of its splendour to the continuity of music and the succession 
of visionary images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be at- 
tempted ; for Shelley is the only English poet who has successfully 
handled that most difficult of metres, terza rima. His power over 



SHELLEY. 



**3 



complicated versification cannot be appreciated except by duly 
noticing the method he employed in treating a structure alien, per- 
haps, to the genius of our literature, and even in Italian used with 
perfect mastery by none but Dante. To select the introduction 
and part of the first paragraph will inflict less violence upon the 
Triumph of Lifers a whole, than to detach one of its episodes 

Swift as a spirit hastening to the task 

Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth 

Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask 

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth. 
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows 
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth 

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose, 

To which the birds tempered their matin lay. 

All flowers in field or forest which unclose 

Their trembling eye] ids to the kiss of day 
Swinging their censers in the element, 
With orient incense Jit by the new ray, 

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent 
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air : 
And, in succession due, did continent, 

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear 
The form and character of mortal mould, 
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear 

Their portion of the toil, which he of old 
Took as his own, and then imposed on them. 
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold 

Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem 
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep, 
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem 

Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep 

Of a green Apennine. Before me fled 

The night ; behind me rose the day ; the deep 

Was at my feet, and Heaven ahove my head,— 
When a strange trance over my fancy grew 
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 

Was so transparent that the scene came through 
As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn 
O'er evening hills, they glimmer ; and I knew 

That I had felt the freshness of that dawn 
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair 
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn 
8 



U 4 SHELLEY. 

Under the self-same bough, and heard as there 
The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold 
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air 
And then a vision on my brain was rolled. 

Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at 
this point one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The 
Triumph of Life itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describ- 
ing the vision for which preparation has been made in the preced- 
ing prelude. It is not without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed 
to the windings of the terza rima, feels its way among them. En- 
tangled and impeded by the labyrinthine sounds, the reader might 
be compared to one who, swimming in his dreams, is carried down 
the cpurse of a swift river clogged with clinging and retarding 
water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour: yet after a 
while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement. 

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, 
This was the tenour of my waking dream : — 
Methought I sate beside a public way 

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream 
Of people there was hurrying to and fro, 
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, 

All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know 
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why 
He made one of the multitude, and so 

Was bourne amid the crowd, as through the sky 
One of the million leaves of summer's bier ; 
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, 

Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear : 

Some flying from the thing they feared, and some 

Seeking the object of another's fear ; 

And others, as with steps towards the tomb, 
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, 
And others mournfully within the gloom 

Of their own shadow walked and called it death ; 
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, 
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath. 

But more, with motions which each other crossed, 
Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, 
Or birds within the noon-day ether lost, 

Upon that path where flowers never grew — 
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, 
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew 



r 



SHELLEY. II 5 

Out of their mossy cells for ever burst ; 

Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told 

Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interpersed, 

With over-arching elms, and caverns cold, 

And violet banks where sweet dreams brood ; — but the 

Pursued their serious folly as of old. 

Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the 
text, to notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has 
been woven in one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound 
the passing of a multitude, which is presented at the same time to 
the eye of fancy by accumulated images. The next eleven triplets 
introduce the presiding genius of the pageant. Students of Pe- 
trarch's Trionfi will not fail to note what Shelley owes to that poet, 
and how he has transmuted the definite imagery of mediaeval sym- 
bolism into something metaphysical and mystic. 

And as I gazed, methought that in the way 
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June 
When the south wind snakes the extinguished day; 

And a cold glare, intenser than the noon 

But icy cold, obscured with blinding light 

The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon — 

When on the sunlit limits of the night 
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, 
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,— 

Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear 

The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form 

Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair ; 

So came a chariot on the silent storm 

Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape 

So sate within, as one whom years deform, 

Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, 
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb. 
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape 

Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom 
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam 
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume 

The guidance of that wonder- winged team ; 
The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings 
Were lost : — I heard alone on the air's soft stream 

The music of their ever-moving wings. 

All the four faces of that charioteer 

Had their eyes banded ; little profit brings 



n6 SHELLEY. 

Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, 
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, 
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere 

Of all that is, has been, or will be done. 
So ill was the car guided — but it past 
With solemn speed majestically on. 

The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme 
poetic effort, the solitude of Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour 
of Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed 
to make Shelley more than usually nervpus. His somnambulism 
returned, and he saw visions. On one occasion he thought that 
the dead Allegra rose from the sea, and clapped her hands, and 
laughed, and beckoned to him. On another he roused the whole 
house at night by his screams, and remained terror-frozen in the 
trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood he communi- 
cated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what she 
afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed 
that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable 
that the last words written to him by Jane were these : — " Are you 
going to join your friend Plato ? " 

The Leigh Hunts at last arrived in Genoa, whence they again 
sailed for Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of 
June. He immediately prepared to join them; and on the 1st of 
July set off with Williams in the Don Juan for Leghorn, where 
he rushed into the arms of his old friend. Leigh Hunt, in his 
autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon the moment." 
From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and established 
them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as com- 
fortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. 
The negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised 
forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet 
from Byron ; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny 
tells how irksome the poet found it to have " a man with a sick 
wife, and seven disorderly children," established in his palace. To 
Mrs. Hunt he was positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her 
self-complacent husband, who, while he had voyaged far and wide 
in literature, had never wholly cast the slough of Cockneyism. 
Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough to understand the true 
magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him ; and the tender solici- 
tude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, harmlessly 
conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two 
together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of 
Pisa to his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less 
hopeful than he used to be, but improved in health and strength 
and spirits. One little touch relating to their last conversation, 
deserves to be recorded: — "He assented warmly to an opinion T 
expressed in the cathedral at Pisa, while the organ was playing, 
that a truly divine religion might yet be established, if charity were 
really made the principle of it, instead of faith." 



SHELLEY. uj 

On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a post- 
chaise for Leghorn ; and early in the afternoon of the next day he 
set sail, with Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor- 
boy, Charles \ ivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who 
was detained on board the Bolivar, in the Leghorn harbour, 
watched them start. The weather for some time had been un- 
usually hot and dry. " Processions of priests and religiosi have 
been for several days past praying for rain ; " so runs the last 
entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or 
nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the 
Don Juan stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at 
three a. m. instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is 
brewing mischief." Then a sea-fog withdrew the Don Juan from 
their sight. It was an oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny 
went down into his cabin, and slept ; but was soon roused by the 
noise of the ships' crews in the harbour making all ready for a 
gale. In a short time the tempest was upon them, with wind, rain, 
and thunder. It did not last more than twenty minutes ; and at its 
end Trelawny looked out anxiously for Shelley's boat. She was 
nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard of her. In fact, 
though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of the catas- 
trophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of a 
felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running 
her down, is still uncertain. 

On the morning of the third day after the storm, Trelawny 
rode to Pisa, and communicated his fears to Hunt. " I then went 
upstairs to Byron. When I told him, his lip quivered, and his 
voice faltered as he questioned me." Couriers were despatched 
to search the sea-coast, and to bring the Bolivar from Leghorn. 
Trelawny rode in person toward Via Reggio, and there found a 
punt, a water-keg, and some bottles, which had been in Shelley's 
boat. A week passed, Trelawny patrolling the shore with the 
coast-guardsmen, but hearing of no new discovery, until at last two 
bodies were cast upon the sand. One found near Via Reggio, on 
the 1 8th of July, was Shelley's. It had his jacket, "with the 
volume of ^Eschylus in one pocket, and Keats's poems in the 
other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act of reading, had 
hastily thrust it away." The other, found near the tower of Mig- 
liarino, at about four miles' distance, was that of Williams. The 
sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, though cast up on the same day, the 
1 8th of July, near Massa, was not heard of by Trelawny till 
the 29th. 

Nothing now remained but to tell the whole dreadful truth to 
the two widowed women, who had spent the last days in agony of 
alternate despair and hope at Villa Magni. This duty Trelawny 
discharged faithfully and firmly. " The next day I prevailed on 
them," he says, " to return with me to Pisa. The misery of that 
night and the journey of the next day, and of many days and nights 
that followed, I can neither describe nor forget." It was decided 
that Shelley should be buried at Rome, near his friend Keats and 



Ii8 SHELLEY. 

his son William, and that Williams's remains should be taken to 
England. But first the bodies had to be burned ; and for permis- 
sion to do this Trelawny, who all through had taken the lead, ap- 
plied to the English Embassy at Florence. After some difficulty 
it was granted. 

What remains tp be said concerning the cremation of Shelley's 
body on the 6th of August, must be told in Trelawny's own worcls. 
Williams, it may be stated, had been burned on the preceding day. 

" Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the 
poet's grave, but as they were at some distance from each other, 
we had to cut a trench thirty yards in length, in the line of the 
sticks, to ascertain the exact spot, and it was nearly an hour before 
we came upon the grave. 

" In the meantime Byron and Leigh Hunt arrived in the car- 
riage, attended by soldiers, and the Health Officer, as before. The 
lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmonized 
with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over 
us ; old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the coast, 
backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, 
picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwel- 
ling was in sight. 

; ' As I thought of the delight Shelley felt in such scenes of 
loneliness and grandeur whilst living, I felt we were no better than 
a herd of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, in tearing out his battered 
and naked body from the pure yellow sand that lay so lightly over 
it, to drag him back to the light of day ; but the dead have no 
voice, nor had I power to check the sacrilege — the work went on 
silently in the deep and unresisting sand, not a word was spoken, 
for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, and their feelings are 
easily excited into sympathy. Byron was silent and thoughtful. 
We were startled and drawn together by a dull, hollow sound that 
followed the blow of a mattock ; the iron had struck a skull, and 

the body was soon uncovered After the fire was well 

kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day ; and more 
wine was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed 
during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames 
glisten and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense 

that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy The fire was 

so fierce as to produce a white heat on the iron, and to reduce its 
contents to gray ashes. The only portions that were not consumed 
were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skill ; but what 
surprised us all was that the heart remained entire. In snatching 
this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt ; and 
had any one seen me do the act, I should have been put into 
quarantine." 

Shelley's heart was given to Hunt, who subsequently, not with- 
out reluctance and unseemly dispute, resigned it to Mrs. Shelley. 
It is now at Boscombe. His ashes were carried by Trelawny to 
Rome and buried in the Protestant cemetery, so touchingly de- 
scribed by him in his letter to Peacock, and afterwards so sublimely 



SHELLEY. i I9 

in Adonais. The epitaph, composed by Hunt, ran thus : " Percy 
Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium, Natus iv. Aug. mdccxcii. Obiit vm 
Jul. mdcccxxii." To the Latin words Trelawny, faithfullest and 
most devoted of friends, added three lines from Ariel's song, much 
loved in life by Shelley : 

Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 

" And so," writes Lady Shelley, " the sea and the earth closed over 
one who was a poet, and still greater as a philanthropist ; and of 
whom it may be said, that his wild spiritual character seems to 
have prepared him for being thus snatched from life under circum- 
stances of mingled terror and beauty, while his powers were yet in 
their spring freshness, and age had not come to render the ethereal 
body decrepit, or to wither the heart which could not be con- 
sumed bv fire." 



12q SHELLEY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EPILOGUE. 

After some deliberation I decided to give this little work on 
Shelley the narrative rather than the essay form, impelled thereto 
by one commanding reason. Shelley's life and his poetry are in- 
dissolubly connected. He acted what he thought and felt, with a 
directness rare among his brethren of the poet's craft ; while his 
verse, with the exception of The Cenci, expressed little but the 
animating thoughts and aspirations of his life. That life, moreover, 
was " a miracle of thirty years," so crowded with striking incident 
and varied experience that, as he said himself, he had already lived 
longer than his father, and ought to be reckoned with the men of 
ninety. Through all vicissitudes he preserved his youth inviolate, 
and died, like one whom the gods love, or like a hero of Hellenic 
story, young, despite grey hairs and suffering. His life has, there- 
fore, to be told, in order that his life-work may be rightly valued : 
for, great as that was, he, the man, was somehow greater; and 
noble as it truly is, the memory of himself is nobler. 

To the world he presented the rare spectacle of a man passion- 
ate for truth, and unreservedly obedient to the right as he discerned 
it. The anomaly which made his practical career a failure, lay just 
here. The right he followed was too often the antithesis of ordinary 
morality: in his desire to cast away the false and grasp the true, 
he overshot the mark of prudence. ^The blending in him of a pure 
and earnest purpose with moral and social theories that could not 
but have proved pernicious to mankind at large, produced at times 
an almost grotesque mixture in his actions no less than in his verse. 
We cannot, therefore, wonder that society, while he lived, felt the 
necessity of asserting itself against him. But now that he has 
passed into the company of the great dead, and time has softened 
down the asperities of popular judgment, we are able to learn the 
real lesson of his life and writings. That is not to be sought in 
any of his doctrines, but rather in his fearless bearing, his resolute 
loyalty to an unselfish and in the simplest sense benevolent ideal. 
It is this which constitutes his supreme importance for us English 
at the present time. Ours is an age in which ideals are rare, and 
we belong to a race in which men who follow them so single-heart- 
edly are not common. 

As a poet, Shelley contributed a new quality to English litera- 



SHELLEY. tax 

ture — a quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, which 
severe critics of other nations think we lack. Byron's daring is in 
a different region : his elemental wordliness and pungent satire do 
not liberate our energies, or cheer us with new hopes and splendid 
vistas. Wordsworth, the very antithesis to Shelley in his reverent 
accord with institutions, suits our meditative mood, sustains us 
with a sound philosophy, and braces us by healthy contact with 
the Nature he so dearly loved. But in Wordsworth there is none 
of Shelley's magnetism. What remains of permanent value in 
Coleridge's poetry — such work as Christabel, the Ancient Mariner ', 
or Kubla Khan — is a product of pure artistic fancy, tempered by 
the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he was, 
loved Nature with a somewhat sensuous devotion. She was for 
him a mistress rather than a Diotima; nor did he share the pro- 
phetic fire which burns in Shelley's verse, quite apart from the direct 
enunciation of his favourite tenets. I In none of Shelley's greatest 
contemporaries was the lyrical faculty so paramount \ and whether 
we consider his minor songs, his odes, or his more complicated 
choral dramas, we acknowledge that he was the loftiest and the 
most spontaneous ^singer of our language. In range of power he 
was also conspicuous above the rest. Not only did he write the 
best lyrics, but the best tragedy, the best translations, and the best 
familiar poems of his century. As a satirist and humourist, I can- 
not place him so high as some of his admirers do ; and the purely 
polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts forth his 
antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its myriad 
forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals into poor rhetoric. 

While his genius was so varied and its flight so unapproached 
in swiftness, it would be vain to deny that Shelley, as an artist, 
had faults from which the men with whom I have compared him 
were more free. The most prominent of these are haste, incoher- 
ence, verbal carelessness, incompleteness, a want of narrative force, 
and a weak hold on objective realities. Even his warmest admir- 
ers, if they are sincere critics, will concede that his verse, taken 
altogether, is marked by inequality. In his eager self-abandonment 
to inspiration, he produced much that is unsatisfying simply because 
it is not ripe. There was no defect of power in him, but a defect 
of patience ; and the final word to be pronounced in estimating the 
larger bulk of his poetry is the word immature. Not only was the 
poet young ; but the fruit of his young mind had been plucked be- 
fore it had been duly mellowed by reflection. Again, he did not 
care enough for common things to present them with artistic ful- 
ness. He was intolerant of detail, and thus failed to model with 
the roundness that we find in Goethe's work. He flew at the 
grand, the spacious, the sublime ; and did not always succeed in 
realising for his readers what he had imagined. A certain want of 
faith in his own powers, fostered by the extraordinary discourage- 
ment under which he had to write, prevented him from finishing 
what he began, or from giving that ultimate form of perfection to 
his longer works which we admire in shorter pieces like the Ode to 



I2 2 SHELLEY. 

the West Wind. When a poem was ready, he had it hastily printed, 
and passed on to fresh creative efforts. If anything occurred to 
interrupt his energy, he flung the sketch aside. Some of these 
defects, if we may use this word at all to indicate our sense that 
Shelley might by care have been made equal to his highest self, 
were in a great measure the correlative of his chief quality — the 
ideality, of which I have already spoken. He composed with all 
his faculties, mental, emotional, and physical, at the utmost strain, 
at a white heat of intense fervour, striving to attain one object, the 
truest and most passionate investiture for the thoughts which had 
inflamed his ever-quick imagination. The result is that his finest 
work has more the stamp of something natural and elemental — the 
wind, the sea, the depth of air — than of a mere artistic product. 
Plato would have said : the Muses filled this man with sacred mad- 
ness, and, when he wrote, he was no longer in his own control. 
There was, moreover, ever-present in his nature an effort, an as- 
piration after a better than the best this world can show, which 
prompted him to blend the choicest products of his thought and 
fancy with the fairest images borrowed from the earth on which he 
lived. He never willingly composed except under the impulse to 
body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the 
spirit of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, 
this earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and 
purity of inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. 
But it cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic 
art should be always found in them. They have something of the 
waywardness and negligence of nature, something of the asymme- 
treia we admire in the earlier creations of Greek architecture. 
That Shelley, acute critic and profound student as he was, could 
conform himself to rule and show himself an artist in the stricter 
sense, is, however, abundantly proved by The Cenci and by Ado- 
nias. The reason why he did not always observe this method will 
be understood by those who have studied his Defence of Poetry ', 
and learned to sympathise with his impassioned theory of art. 

Working on this small scale, it is difficult to do barest justice 
to Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are 
almost overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those 
who ought to meet in love over his grave, have spent their time in 
quarrelling about him, and baffling the most eager seeker for the 
truth.* Through the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it 
is impossible to discern the whole personality of the man. By 
careful comparison and refined manipulation of the biographical 
treasures at our disposal, a fair portrait of Shelley might still be 
set before the reader with the accuracy of a finished picture. That 
labour of exquisite art and of devoted love still remains to be ac- 
complished, though in the meantime Mr. W. M. Rossetti's Memoir 
is a most valuable instalment. Shelley in his lifetime bound those 
who knew him with a chain of loyal affection, impressing observers 

* See Lady Shelley v. Hogg ; Trelawny v. the Shelley family ; Peacock v. Lady 
Shelley; Garnett v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, &c, &c. 



SHELLEY. I23 

so essentially different as Hogg, Byron, Peacock, Leigh Hunt, Tre- 
lawny, Med win, Williams, with the conviction that he was the gen- 
tlest, purest, bravest, and most spiritual being they had ever met. 
The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his 
four last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually 
riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of 
his youth were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was 
expanding, his character mellowing, and his genius growing daily 
stronger. Without losing the fire that burned in him, he had been 
lessoned by experience into tempering its fervour; and when he 
reached the age of twenty-nine, he stood upon the height of his 
most glorious achievement, ready to unfold his wings for a yet sub- 
limer flight. At that moment, when life at last seemed about to 
offer him rest, unimpeded activity, and happiness, death robbed 
the world of his maturity. Posterity has but the product of his 
cruder years, the assurance that he had already outlived them into 
something nobler, and the tragedy of his untimely end. 

If a final word were needed to utter the unutterable sense of 
waste excited in us by Shelley's premature absorption into the mys- 
tery of the unknown, we might find it in the last lines of his own 
Alastor : 

Art and eloquence, 
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 
It is a woe " too deep for tears," when all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit, 
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, 
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ; 
But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 



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Woman's Place To-day. 

Four lectures in reply to the Lenten lectures on "Woman," by the Rev. 
Morgan Dix, D.D., of Trinity Church, New York. 

By Lillie Devereux Blake. 

No. 104, IiOVEIiL-'S LIBRARY, Paper Covers, 20 Cents, 
Cloth Limp, 50 Cents. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake last evening entertained an audience that filled 
Frobisher's Hall, in East Fourteenth Street, by a witty and sarcastic handling 
of the recent Lenten talk of the Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix on the follies of women 
of society.— New York Times. 

Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake is a very eloquent lady, and a thorn in the side 
of the Rev. Dr. Dix, and gentlemen who, like him, presume to say that woman 
is not man's equal, if not his superior. Mrs. Blake in her reply to Dr. Dix's 
recent lecture upon "Divorce, " made some interesting remarks upon the sex 
to which she has the honor to belong. — New York Commercial Advertiser. 

There is no denying that Mrs. Biake has, spartan-like, stood as a break-water 
to the surging flood Rector Dix has cast upon the so-called weaker sex with 
the hope of engulfing it. It is sad to see a gentleman in the position Dr. Dix 
occupies setting himself deliberately at work to not only bring reproach upon 
the female sex, but to make us all look with eemtempt upon our "mothers and 
sisters. And the worst of his case is that he has shown that spirit in the male 
part of mankird. which is not at all ereditable to it, of depreciating the in- 
tellect, the judgment, the ability and the capability of the female sex in order 
to elevate to a higher plane the male sex. According to Dr. Dix the world 
w T ould be better were there no more female children born. And he makes 
this argument in the face of the fact that there would be " hell upon earth " 
were it not for the influence of women, and such women as Mrs. Lillie Devereux 
Blake, especially.— Albany Sunday Press. 



Mrs. Blake's wis the most interesting and spicy speech of the evening. She 
was in a sparkling mood and hit at everything and everybody that came to 
her mind. —The Evening Telegram. N. Y. 

A stately lily of a woman, with delicate features, a pair of great gray eyes that 
dilate as she speaks till they light her whole face like two great soft stars. — 2 he 
Independent, N. Y. 

* * * She advanced to the front of the platform, gesticulated gracefully 
and spoke vigorously, defiantly and without notes.— New York Citizen. 

* * * a most eloquent and polished oration. The peroration w^s a grand 
burst of eloquence.— Troy Times. 

Lillie Devereux Blake, blon de, brilliant, staccate, stylish, is a fluent speaker, 
of good platform presence, and argued wittily and well.— Washington Post. 

There are very few speakers on the platform who have the brightness, 
vivacity and fluency of Lillie Devereux Blake.— Albany Sunday Pre* s. 

She is an easy, graceful speaker, and wide-awake withal, bringing our fre- 
quent applause. — Hartford Times. 

Mrs. Blake's address was forcible and eloquent. The speaker was frequently 
interrupted by applause. — New York Times. 

The most brilliant lady speaker in the city.— New York Herald. 

Has the reputation of being the wittiest woman on the platform.— San An- 
tonio Express. 

Mrs. Blake, who has a most pleasing address, then spoke; a strong vein of 
sarcasm, wit and humor pervaded the lady's remarks.— Poughkeepsie News. 

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RECENTLY PUBLISHED : 

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Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches from Life. 

By STEPNIAK, formerly Editor of " Zemlia i Volia " (Land and 
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from the Italian. 1 vol. 12mo., paper cover, Lovell's Library, 
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An Outline of the History of Ireland, 

Prom the Earliest Times to the present day. 
By JUSTIN H. McCARTHY. 1 vol. 12mo., Lovell's Library 
No. 115, price 10 cents 

*'A timely and exceedingly vigorous and interesting little volume. The book 
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distinguished journalist and author —Christian World 

'Ail Irishmeo who love their country, and all candid Englishmen, ought to 
welcome Mr Justin H. McCarthy" slitile volume— 'An Outline of Irish History. 
Those who want to know how it has come about that, as John Stuart Mill long 
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* V A brightly written and intelligent account of the leading events in Irish 

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Eyre's Acquittal 10 

20.0 JO Leagues Under 

the Sea, by Verne. . . .20 
Anti-Slavery Days... .20 
Beauty's Daughters.. .20 
Beyond the Sunrise.. . .20 
Hard Times, Dickens .20 
Tom Cringle's Log. . . .20 

Vanity Fair 30 

Underground Russia. .20 
Middlemarch, Eliot.. .20 

Do., Part II .20 

SirTom,MrsOiiphant .20 
Peiham, by Lytton. . . .20 

The Story of Ida 10 

Madcap Violet, Black .20 
The Little Pilgrim 10 

180. Kilmeny, by Black... .20 

181. Whist or Bumble- 

puppy? 10 

182. The Beautiful Wretch .20 

183. Her Mother's Sia 20 

184. Greeu Pasture 4 and 

Piccadilly, Black ... .20 

185. The Mysterious Island .15 

Do.,PartII 15 

Do., Part III 15 

186. Tom Brown at Oxford .15 
Do., Part II .15 

J187. Thicker than Water.. .2 J 

1188. In Silk Attire, Black. .20 

1189. Scottish Chiefs, P't I.. 20 
Do., Part II 20 

1190. Willy Reillv, Carleton .20 

191. The Nauiz Family... .20 

192. Great Expectations... .20 

193. Pendennis, Thackeray .20 
Do., Part II 20 

194. Widow Bedott Papers .20 

195. Daniel Deronda, Eliot. .20 
Do, Part II 20 

K95. AitioraPeto,01iphant .20 
97. By the Gate of tne Sea .i5 

198. Tales of a Traveller.. .20 

199. Life and Voyages of 

Columbus P't I. .20 

RDo. (Irving), Part II.. . .20 
. The Pilgrim's Progress .20 
. Martin Chuzzlewit... .20 
Do., Part II 20 
. TheophrastusSuch... .10 
2U3. Disarmed, M. Edwards .15 
)4. Eugene Aram, Lytton ,20 
The Spanish Gypsy 

and Other Poems 20 

Cast Up by the Sea... .20 
Mill on the Floss, P't I .15 

Do. (Eliot), Part II 15 

Brother Jacob, Eliot. .10 

TbeExecutor 20 

American Notes 15 

The Newcomes, Parti .20 

Do.,PartII 20 

ThePrivateersman... .20 
The Three Feathers. .20 

Phantom Fortune 20 

Red Eric, Ballantyne. .20 
Lady Silverdale's 
Sweetheart, Black. . . .10 



217. 
218. 
219. 

220. 
221. 
222. 
223. 

224. 

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227. 

228. 

229. 
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232 
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248. 
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252. 

253. 
254. 
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256. 
257. 
258. 
259. 

260. 
261. 

262. 
263. 
264. 
265. 
266. 



The Four Macnicols. .10 
Mr. Pisistratus Brown .10 
Dombey & Son, Part I .2) 

Do.,PartII 20 

Book of Snobs 10 

Grimm's Fairy Tales.. .20 
The Disowned, Lytton .20 
Little Dorrit, Dickens. .20 

Do., Part II.. 20 

Abbotslord and New- 
stead Abbey, Irving. .10 

Oliver Goldsmith 10 

The Fire Brigade 20 

Rifie and Hound in 

Ceylon .20 

Our Mutual Friend . . . .20 

Do. Part II. 20 

Paris Sketches -.. .15 

Belinda, Broughton... .20 

Nicholas Nickleby 20 

Do., Part II 20 

Monarch Mincing Lane .20 
Eight Years Wander- 
ing in Ceylon, Baker .20 

Pictures from Italy 15 

Adventurer of Philip. .15 

Do., Part II 15 

Knickerbocker His- 
tory of New York .. .20 

TheBoyatMugby 10 

The Virginians, P't I. .20 

Do., Part II 20 

Erling tne Bold 20 

Keneini Chillingly 20 

Deep Down 20 

Samuel Brohl & Co. • . . .20 
Gautran, by Farjeon.. .20 
Bleak House, Part I. . .20 

Do.,PartII 20 

What Will He Do Wi' It .20 

Do.,PartlI 20 

Sketches of Young 

Couples 10 

Devereux, Lytton — .20 
Life of Webster, 2 pts. .30 
The Cray oii Papers. . . .20 
The Caxtons, Lytton. .15 

Do, Part II 15 

Autobiography of An- 
thony Troll ope .20 

Critical Reviews, by 

Thackeray 10 

Lucretia, Lytton, P't I .20 

Peter, the Whaler 20 

Last of the Barons.. .15 

Do., Part II 15 

Eastern Sketches 15 

All in a Gard-n Fair .20 
File No. 113, Gabonau .20 
The Parisians, Lytton . .20 

Do., Part II 20 

Mrs. Darling's Letters .20 
Master Humphrey's 

Clock 10 

Fatal Boots, Thackr'y .10 
The Alhambra, Irving .15 
The Four Georges. .. .10 | 
Plutarch's Lives, 5 pts 1.00 | 
Under the Red Flag.. .10 



267. 
263. 

269. 
±70. 
271. 

272. 

273. 
274. 
275. 
276. 

377. 

2:8. 

279. 
280. 
281. 
282. 

283. 
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285. 
286. 

287. 
288. 



289. 
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299. 

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305. 
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308. 

309. 

310. 

311. 
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315. 
316. 

317. 
318. 
319. 
320. 
321. 
322. 



The Haunted House.. .10 
When the Ship Cornea 

Home 10 

One False, both Fair. . .20 

Mudi og Papers 10 

My Novel, by Bulwer- 

Lytton. 3 parts 60 

Conquest of Granada.. .20 

Sketches by Boz 20 

A Christmas Carol 15 

lone Stewart. Linton. . .20 
Harold, Lytton, Parti .15 

Do., Part II 15 

Dora Thome , 20 

Maid of Athens 20 

The Conquest of Spain .10 

Fitzboodle Papers 10 

Bracebrid^e Hall 20 

The Uncommercial 

Traveler 20 

Roundabout Papers. . . .20 
Rossmoyne, Duchess. .20 
A Legend of the Rhine .10 

Cox's Diary 10 

Beyond Pardon, .20 

Somebody's Luggage, 
and Mrs. Lirnper's 

Lodgings 10 

Godoiphin, Lytton 20 

Salmagundi, Irving.. . . .20 
Famous Funny Fel- 
lows, Clemens 20 

Irish Sketches 20 

The Battle of Life 10 

Pilgrims of the Rhine .15 
Random Shots, Adeler .20 

Men r s Wives 10 

Mystery of Edwin 

Drood, by Dickens. . . .20 
Reprinted Pieces from 

C.Dickens.... 20 

Astoria, by W. Irving. .20 
Novels by Eminent 

Hands 10 

Spanish Voyages 20 

No Thoroughfare 10 

Character Sketches... .10 

Christmas Books 20 

A Tour on the Prairies ,10 
Ballads of Thackeray. . .15 
Yellowplush Papers. . . .10 
Life of Mahomet, P't I .15 

Do, Part II 15 

Sketches and Travels 
in i ondon, Thack'ray .10 

T.ife of Goldsmith 20 

Capt. Bonneville 20 

Golden Girls, Alan Muir .20 
English Humorist* ... .15 
Moorish Chronicles... .10 

Winifred Power 20 

Great Hoggarty Dia- 
mond. .30 

Pausanias, Lytton 15 

The New Abelard .... .20 

A Real Queen 20 

The Rose and the Ring .20 
Wolfert's Roost, Irving 10 
Maik Seaworth 20 



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paration for the relief of indigestion and for general debility; nay, I do more 
than recommend, 1 really urge all invalids to put it to the test, for in sev- 
eral cases personally known to me signal benefits have been derived from 
its use. I have recently watched its effects on a young friend who has 
suffered from indigestion all her life. After taking the Vitalized Phos- 
phites for a fortnight she said to me; • I feel another person; it is a pleas- 
ure to live.' Many hard-working men and women — especially those engaged 
in brain work — would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other 
destructive stimulants^ if they would have recourse to a remedy so simple 
and so efficacious." 

Emily Faithfuli*. 

Physicians have prescribed over 600,000 Packages because thjby 
know its Composition, that it is not a secret remedy, and 
that the formula is printed on every label. 

For Sale toy JDru ^grists or by Trf ail, £x. 

F. CROSBY CO., 664 and 666 Sixth Avenue, New Torko 



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